Free Republic

The molecular surface of IDE is represented by light yellow. The N- and C-terminal domains of IDE are colored green and red, respectively. The beta-amyloid (blue) is entrapped inside the degradation chamber of the IDE molecule. Yuequan Shen, Univ. of Chicago Researchers from the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory have deciphered the three-dimensional structure of insulin-degrading enzyme, a promising target for new drugs because it breaks down not only insulin but also the amyloid-beta protein, which has been linked to the cognitive decline of Alzheimer's disease. In the October 19, 2006, issue of Nature (available online Oct. 11),...

LONDON (Reuters) - Elan and Wyeth's key new drug bapineuzumab worked for a substantial proportion of Alzheimer's disease patients in an intermediate clinical trial, supporting a prior decision to start final phase III tests. The two companies said on Tuesday that although the drug did not achieve overall statistically significant results in the phase II study, its benefits over placebo were significant in an important subgroup. The update on the antibody medicine, also known as AAB-001, is perhaps the year's most keenly awaited biotech trial result. If successful in final-stage trials, the medicine could be the world's first drug to...

The finding could open the door to improved treatments. Researchers say they've discovered a gene that may make it easier for people to develop Alzheimer's disease, and it could become a target for drug treatments. "This new work not only provides a better understanding of the mechanism leading to the disease, but identifies a risk factor as an important target for therapy," said Philippe Marambaud, an assistant professor of pathology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and member of an international team of scientists that released its findings Wednesday. Alzheimer's disease, which causes senility and...

The leader of the team that made the discovery, Professor Christopher Rowe of the Austin Hospital in Melbourne, says early diagnosis and treatment presents medical practitioners with the best opportunity to delay the onset of Alzheimer's. "While the discovery is at an experimental stage, this work places Australia at the forefront of neuro-imaging in Alzheimer's disease," Professor Rowe says. A 2004 Access Economics report calculated that if the average age of onset of Alzheimer's was raised by just five months, cumulative savings of A$1.3 billion would be realised by 2020 rising to A$6.6 billion by 2040. Alzheimer's disease is characterised...

Nutritional supplement as effective as red wine in preventing amyloid beta plaque build upA compound found in grape seed extract reduces plaque formation and resulting cognitive impairment in an animal model of Alzheimer's disease, new research shows. The study appears in the June 18 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Lead study author Giulio Pasinetti, MD, PhD, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and colleagues found that the grape seed extract prevents amyloid beta accumulation in cells, suggesting that it may block the formation of plaques. In Alzheimer's disease, amyloid beta accumulates to form toxic plaques that disrupt normal brain...

Fake bus stop keeps Alzheimer's patients from wandering off By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin Last Updated: 11:11PM BST 03/06/2008 German nursing homes are using a novel strategy to stop Alzheimer's patients from wandering off: phantom bus stops. The idea was first tried at Benrath Senior Centre in Düsseldorf, which pitched an exact replica of a standard stop outside, with one small difference: buses do not use it. The centre had been forced to rely on police to retrieve patients who wanted to return to their often non-existent homes and families. Then Benrath teamed up with a local care association...

AP (CHICAGO) — Results from a large government experiment are dimming hopes that two common painkillers can prevent Alzheimer's disease or slow mental decline in older people. The arthritis drug Celebrex and the over-the-counter painkiller Aleve showed no benefit on thinking skills, new findings show. Earlier results from the same research showed the two drugs didn't prevent Alzheimer's, at least in the short term. The experiment was halted several years early in 2004 when heart risks turned up in a separate study on Celebrex. Researchers also had noticed more heart attacks and strokes in the people taking Aleve in the...

In the near future, we will be releasing some new projects which require a very rapid turn-around time. These are peptide fragment simulations which we are interested in simulating for a time-sensitive collaborative project involving protein structure prediction. These WUs will go directly to the classic clients running with -advmethods. Non-classic clients (eg SMP, GPU, PS3) will not be affected, as all of these calculations will be run via the AMBER core and only the classic client supports the AMBER core. To reward users for participating in this exciting project, we will be giving a x1.5 bonus in the points...

My grandfather was a college football star who even played for the NFL champs back in 1928, so I was looking forward to seeing George Clooney’s new 1920s football movie, Leatherheads, this weekend. That’s before I found out how Clooney, like many lefties in Hollywood and the news media, had treated the late Charlton Heston. Clooney’s offense took place a few years back. According to Life Site News, “For his conservative stands, however, Heston was attacked and reviled by his Hollywood colleagues. In 2003 actor and leftist political activist George Clooney joked about Heston’s illness [Alzheimer’s disease], and, after Heston...

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Former President Jimmy Carter embraced a leading Hamas figure Tuesday, according to participants in a meeting that infuriated Israeli officials already upset by Carter's freelance Mideast peace mission. Carter also laid a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat, whom the Bush administration and many Israelis blame for the breakdown of peace talks seven years ago and the violence that followed. At a reception in the West Bank town of Ramallah organized by Carter's office, the former president hugged Nasser Shaer, a senior Hamas politician, meeting participants said. Embraces between men are a common custom...

Scientists claim videos are proof of breakthrough An injection that dramatically relieved the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease within minutes would qualify as the discovery of the decade. That is exactly what was claimed yesterday for an experimental treatment being tested in America. Scientists at the Institute for Neurological Research at the University of California have treated around 50 patients at a private clinic by injecting an anti-arthritic drug, etanercept, into the spinal column in the neck and then tilting the patients to encourage the drug to flow to the brain. They claim 90 per cent respond to the treatment, usually...

A daily dose of caffeine blocks the disruptive effects of high cholesterol that scientists have linked to Alzheimer's disease. A study in the open access publication, Journal of Neuroinflammation revealed that caffeine equivalent to just one cup of coffee a day could protect the blood-brain barrier (BBB) from damage that occurred with a high-fat diet. The BBB protects the central nervous system from the rest of the body's circulation, providing the brain with its own regulated microenvironment. Previous studies have shown that high levels of cholesterol break down the BBB which can then no longer protect the central nervous system...

NEW YORK - Having a big belly in your 40s can boost your risk of getting Alzheimer's disease or other dementia decades later, a new study suggests. It's not just about your weight. While previous research has found evidence that obesity in middle age raises the chances of developing dementia later, the new work found a separate risk from storing a lot of fat in the abdomen. Even people who weren't overweight were susceptible. That abdominal fat, sometimes described as making people apple-shaped rather than pear-shaped, has already been linked to higher risk of developing diabetes, stroke and heart disease....

My name is Terry Pratchett, author of a series of inexplicably successful fantasy books and I have had Alzheimer's now for the past two years plus, in which time I managed to write a couple of bestsellers. I have a rare variant. I don't understand very much about it, but apparently if you are going to have Alzheimer's it's a good one to have. So, a stroke of luck there then! Interestingly enough, when I was diagnosed last December by those nice people at Addenbrooke's, I started a very different journey through dementia. This one had much better scenery, interesting...

(IsraelNN.com) The initial findings of a study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem show that a non-psychoactive component of cannabis, marijuana, may hold out hope for slowing down the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. The research, still at an early stage, indicates that memory loss, the first and primary symptom of Alzheimer’s disease, can be slowed down significantly in mice by cannabidiol. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, affects some 24.3 million people worldwide. In the study conducted by Professor Raphael Mechoulam and a team led by Dr. Maria de Ceballos at the Cajal Institute in Madrid, Spain, mice...

*** New PS3 client *** Sony has released an upgraded client for the PS3. Check out Noam Rimon's (he's the lead developer at Sony) post: Hello, Starting today a new version of Folding is available. This version is a minor fix to the previous 1.3 version and adds a better tuned algorithm that handles peak performance hours of Folding@home network, by acting differently to certain network errors if those occur. It is recommended that you update to the new version by quitting the application and restarting it. Your current WU will not be damaged in any way, in-fact Folding will...

Mouse-brain study shows protein plaques to be a cause of the problem.Protein plaques in the brain are characteristic of Alzheimer's... but are they a primary cause of the disease?SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY The brain protein plaques characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease can form extraordinarily fast, and seem to be the starting point of further degeneration in the brain — at least in mice. The results, published today in Nature1, help to settle a long-standing debate about whether such plaques are a primary cause or a symptom of Alzheimer's, and may have implications for how the disease is treated. "It’s a very exciting...

The helmet that could turn back the symptoms of Alzheimer's By DAVID DERBYSHIRE - More by this author » Last updated at 10:47am on 25th January 2008 An experimental helmet which scientists say could reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease within weeks of being used is to be tried out on patients. The strange-looking headgear - which has to be worn for ten minutes every day - bathes the brain with infra-red light and stimulates the growth of brain cells. Its creators believe it could reverse the symptoms of dementia - such as memory loss and anxiety - after only...

"Today" show Matt Lauer asked presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton on Friday if she has a connection to indicted developer Tony Rezko after flashing an undated photo of the two posing with President bill Clinton. ... Clinton said she did not remember taking the photo and said she doesn't even remember meeting Rezko...

An experimental helmet which scientists say could reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease within weeks of being used is to be tried out on patients. The strange-looking headgear - which has to be worn for ten minutes every day - bathes the brain with infra-red light and stimulates the growth of brain cells. Its creators believe it could reverse the symptoms of dementia - such as memory loss and anxiety - after only four weeks. Alzheimer's disease charities last night described the treatment as "potentially life- changing" - but stressed that the research was still at the very early stages....

An experimental helmet which scientists say could reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease within weeks of being used is to be tried out on patients. The strange-looking headgear - which has to be worn for ten minutes every day - bathes the brain with infra-red light and stimulates the growth of brain cells. Its creators believe it could reverse the symptoms of dementia - such as memory loss and anxiety - after only four weeks. Alzheimer's disease charities last night described the treatment as "potentially life- changing" - but stressed that the research was still at the very early stages.

WILTON, Conn. -- When Sister Kathleen Treanor's soul ascends to heaven, her brain will go to a less ethereal realm: a medical lab in Kentucky. Two decades ago, Sister Treanor and 677 other members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame granted a young researcher's request to test them each year to track the progression of Alzheimer's disease and other age-related brain disorders.   The 61 surviving nuns recently completed their last round of intellectual and physical tests for the Nun Study, one of the world's most comprehensive neurological research projects.  One final sacrifice remains: When they die, their brains...

Differential regulation of dynein and kinesin motor proteins by the microtubule associated protein tau. The Penn group found that dynein, which carries loads towards the interior of the nerve cell, maneuvers around tau; whereas, kinesin, which carries loads towards the outside of the nerve cell, detaches when it encounters tau. Credit: Credit: Ram Dixit, PhD, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine discovered that proteins carrying chemical cargo in nerve cells react differently when exposed to the tau protein, which plays an important role in Alzheimer’s disease. Dynein and kinesin proteins transport...

In a new report, U.S. researchers describe the improvement in brain function that occurred in a patient with Alzheimer's disease just minutes after receiving an injection in the spine of the arthritis drug Enbrel (also known as etanercept). For instance, just prior to treatment the patient was agitated and could not name the state. Ten minutes after treatment, he appeared calmer, more attentive, less frustrated and was able to correctly name the state. Further improvements in mental functioning, memory, and other cognitive parameters were noted at 2 hours. Dr. Edward L. Tobinick, from the University of California at Los Angeles,...

Drug 'can reverse Alzheimer's symptoms in minutes'Last updated at 13:07pm on 10.01.08 A drug used for arthritis can reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's "in minutes". It appears to tackle one of the main features of the disease - inflammation in the brain. The drug, called Enbrel, is injected into the spine where it blocks a chemical responsible for damaging the brain and other organs. A pilot study carried out by U.S. researchers found one patient had his symptoms reversed "in minutes". Other patients have shown some improvements in symptoms such as forgetfulness and confusion after weekly injections over six months....

Reversal Of Alzheimer's Symptoms Within Minutes In Human StudyPET Scan of Alzheimer's Disease Brain. (Credit: NIH/National Institute On Aging) ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2008) — An extraordinary new scientific study, which for the first time documents marked improvement in Alzheimer’s disease within minutes of administration of a therapeutic molecule, has just been published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation. This new study highlights the importance of certain soluble proteins, called cytokines, in Alzheimer’s disease. The study focuses on one of these cytokines, tumor necrosis factor-alpha(TNF), a critical component of the brain’s immune system. Normally, TNF finely regulates the transmission of neural impulses...

We're often interested in comparing things--predicting a known difference is a good way to test our methods. Then, once we're pretty confident that things work, we want to predict ways to change the way proteins interact. Changing a system in a defined way is both a good tool for biological insight and the basis for a lot of medical treatments. In this particular case, we're interested in the "selectivity" of ligand binding by a protein: the protein is known to bind one small molecule ("ligand") much better than another. So project 3903/3905 is a pair of projects comparing the protein-small...

It's good news that we are living longer, but bad news that the longer we live, the better our odds of developing late-onset Alzheimer's disease. Many Alzheimer's researchers have long touted fish oil, by pill or diet, as an accessible and inexpensive "weapon" that may delay or prevent this debilitating disease. Now, UCLA scientists have confirmed that fish oil is indeed a deterrent against Alzheimer's, and they have identified the reasons why. Greg Cole, professor of medicine and neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and associate director of UCLA's Alzheimer Disease Research Center, and his colleagues...

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Fantasy author Terry Pratchett has admitted that he has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's disease -- but says he plans to continue writing his multi-million selling Discworld books.

A Party brought together the family. I have not seen my sister in two year's and I was shocked. My sister is 67 yrs old but was very busy and vibrant, travels the world with her husband.

More than 100,000 people in Britain suffering from dementia are being prescribed drugs by doctors and care homes that at best offer few benefits and at worst are lethal, according to shocking new research. The controversial drugs, which are often used to sedate patients, have been described as a "liquid cosh" by one expert and the study has provoked a call for stricter limitations on their use. Professor Clive Ballard from King's College, London, investigated the effects of anti-psychotic medication, which is given to nearly half of dementia patients in care homes at an annual cost of £80million. He found...

The identification of a new marker is making it possible to track brain stem cells for the first time, U.S. researchers report. The achievement is already opening doors to new research into depression, early childhood development and multiple sclerosis, the team's senior author said. "This is a way to detect these cells in the brain, so that you can track them in certain conditions where we suspect that these cells play a certain role," explained Dr. Mirjana Maletic-Savatic, an assistant professor of neurology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. "This is also very applicable for situations where...

Memories help construct lives and life experiences—without them, living life would be nearly impossible. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases are debilitating illnesses capable of ruining victims’ lives and inflicting pain and sadness on their families. Recent findings at UC Irvine show that the use of stem cells can reverse memory loss after brain injuries and diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. “This study can very well benefit people with diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as physical brain injuries and neuron loss, if it becomes transferable to humans,” said Debbie Morisette, a stereologist working on the study. “But as of right...

Her spouse's Alzheimer's has exacted a toll her, and the country feels it, too.From Arizona last week came the sad news that John O'Connor, husband of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, has grown romantically attached to another patient in an Alzheimer's facility where both live. For Justice O'Connor, the pain of watching her husband drift away must at some level be balanced by the notion that his new relationship brings him some measure of happiness andpeace. Their son reported she was gratified that her husband "was relaxed and happy and comfortable living here." John O'Connor's fading connection stands...

A plea to all owners of new computers and PS3s this weekend to strongly consider adding the Folding@home program to your new system to run in the background. Why? Because Alzheimer's Disease, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes are partially or wholly caused by mid-folded proteins. You can help by simply running a piece of software. Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer...

The retired Supreme Court justice's spouse, John O'Connor, has had Alzheimer's disease for 17 years, and after moving into an assisted-living center in Phoenix, he began a romance with a fellow patient also suffering from the mind-debilitating ailment. But the justice isn't jealous - the O'Connor family believes the love has given John, 77, a new lease on life. "Mom was thrilled that dad was relaxed and happy and comfortable living here and wasn't complaining," their son Scott O'Connor, 50, told Phoenix's KPNX-TV. Scott said that when his father recently arrived at the Huger Mercy Living Center, he was depressed....

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has been happily married to her law school sweetheart, John O'Connor, since 1952. John O'Connor has Alzheimer's disease and lives in a Phoenix home care facility, where he has found a new girlfriend. Story Send Us Your Questions About Living With Alzheimer's Speaking to a Phoenix TV station this week, O'Connor's son, Scott, described his father as acting "like a teenager in love" and says his mother is happy for him. Unusual as that sounds, doctors say the O'Connors' situation is not uncommon. Dr. Walter Fanburg at Arbor Place Dementia Care says, "The...

The husband of retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has struck up a romance with a woman who is a fellow Alzheimer's patient and lives at the same assisted living center as him, according to a television news report. The retired justice isn't jealous about the relationship and is pleased that her husband is comfortable at the center, the couple's son, Scott O'Connor, told KPNX in Phoenix in a broadcast that aired Thursday. "Mom was thrilled that dad was relaxed and happy," Scott O'Connor said. An effort by The Associated Press to reach Scott O'Connor on Tuesday morning was...

Evidence is building that the cold sore virus may be linked to Alzheimer's disease, an expert says. In lab tests, Manchester University found brains infected with the herpes simplex virus, HSV-1, saw a rise in a protein linked to Alzheimer's. Scientists believe the discovery could pave the way for a vaccine that may help prevent the brain disorder, New Scientist magazine reported. But such a breakthrough was a long-time off, experts said. The researchers infected cultures of human brain cells with the virus and found a "dramatic" increase in levels of the beta amyloid protein - the building blocks of...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Researchers have developed a simple blood test that may be able to predict whether mild lapses of memory could be an early sign of Alzheimer's disease. In a study published on Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine, an international team of researchers describe 18 cell-signaling, or communication, proteins found in blood that predicted with 90 percent accuracy whether a person would develop Alzheimer's disease. They said tests to detect changes in these proteins could be used to predict the disease two to six years ahead of its onset and may be useful in the search for treatments....

Sweden has long been at the forefront of brain research, but what is happening in this field today? And is it really possible to train the brain, as Professor Torkel Klingberg claims?

The PandeGroup has all been very excited about the great turnout of FAH donors over the last few weeks, allowing FAH to go over a petaflop. The PS3's have been cranking out some very useful scientific results due to the new scientific software present in v1.2. The PS3's are so fast, we've been looking at the results sometimes 2x to 3x a day (instead of a couple times a month). If all goes well, we're hoping to write up these results soon (maybe a few weeks) for peer reviewed publication. It's also interesting to think about what we want to...

Insulin, it turns out, may be as important for the mind as it is for the body. Research in the last few years has raised the possibility that Alzheimer’s memory loss could be due to a novel third form of diabetes. Now scientists at Northwestern University have discovered why brain insulin signaling -- crucial for memory formation -- would stop working in Alzheimer’s disease. They have shown that a toxic protein found in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s removes insulin receptors from nerve cells, rendering those neurons insulin resistant. (The protein, known to attack memory-forming synapses, is called an...

Insulin, it turns out, may be as important for the mind as it is for the body. Research in the last few years has raised the possibility that Alzheimer’s memory loss could be due to a novel third form of diabetes. Now scientists at Northwestern University have discovered why brain insulin signaling -- crucial for memory formation -- would stop working in Alzheimer’s disease. They have shown that a toxic protein found in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s removes insulin receptors from nerve cells, rendering those neurons insulin resistant. (The protein, known to attack memory-forming synapses, is called an...

Folding@home will announce this week that it has offically joined the ranks of PetaFLOP computing! While teasing with the mark before, this appears to be the real deal. A formal announcement should come this week from Stanford University as the numbers are crosschecking for publication. Why does this matter? Because every computer and PS3 that has joined the fight to research Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease puts us that much closer to a CURE for these brain wasting diseases. Imagine if Ronald Reagan was strong for another 10 years in retirement and had been fully able to participate after his...

Time for an update. The Free Republic Folding team #36120 started about 4 years ago, and became popular in December of 2005. We will hit 30,000,000 points this week and congratulations are in order to all folders. Our FreeRepublic team of 475 members comprised primarily of Free Republic members in good standing have banded together to donate their excess CPU cycles to a worthy cause. Via distributed computing, millions of computers around the world, contribute directly to scientific research, in the quest for a greater understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Cancer, and Mad Cow (BSE). Currently, the team is...

Let's cut to the chase: conservative Republicans have only one choice for President in 2008: Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. Unlike the GOP frontrunners, Paul is the real deal. No real conservative could support Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Fred Thompson, or Newt Gingrich. When it comes to historic conservative principles, each of these men is as phony as a three dollar bill. That they are now attempting to cast themselves as conservatives is more than laughable: it is downright hilarious. [ snip ] If one wants a true photograph of how a congressman or senator votes on conservative,...

A ruling by the national drug watchdog to limit access to an Alzheimer’s drug has been upheld by the High Court. The drug company Eisai challenged the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) over its guidance that for most patients Eisai’s drug Aricept was not a cost-effective use of NHS resources. This was the first legal challenge to a NICE judgment and, except in one aspect, it was a failure. In the High Court yesterday Mrs Justice Dobbs ruled that on five out of six issues raised by Eisai and the Alzheimer’s Society, the challenge failed. NICE’s decision,...

Scientists have moved a step closer to finding a cure for Alzheimer's, it has been revealed. Biologists have developed a compound which has successfully prevented the disease killing brain cells, improving memory and learning ability that was already damaged. The researchers at the University of St Andrews, working with scientists in the US, have developed man-made compounds capable of blocking a nerve cell interaction known to lead to the symptoms of the disease. The results of the study - carried out in the laboratory using a model of the disease - have prompted the Alzheimer's Research Trust to help fund...

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas TX are seeking patients to participate in medical studies for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and low-back pain. All clinical trials are approved by UT Southwestern’s Institutional Review Board, which reviews them for benefits, risks, side effects and informed consent. Parkinson’s UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers are enrolling patients with Parkinson’s disease to determine if creatine, normally used as a nutritional supplement, can slow the progression of the disease. Study participants will receive either creatine or a placebo and must not take creatine outside the study during the trial. The investigators will measure...