Being both an active scientist and a part-time reporter leads to some interesting situations. Most of the time, my scientific background could be considered an advantage when evaluating reports because...
One of the earliest clues that apoE may contribute to AD pathology was the immunohistochemical demonstration by Namba and colleagues that ApoE was present in both plaques and tangles...
The award for most aesthetically pleasing presentation almost certainly could go to Dr. Paul Thompson, who reviewed recent advances being made by a UCLA team in developing AD-specific brain atlases for assessing alterations in the brain over time...
At least I hope they will come. Brian Cummings presented an overview of a web-based database for Alzheimer’s cases (known as the Neuropathological Examination Research Database or NERD) that could serve as a model for other AD centers...
A central problem in Alzheimer's disease is to understand how Aβ affects the brain's biology, and how it contributes to neurodegeneration. A diverse array of mechanisms have been proposed...
The 15 invited conference speakers reported their most current findings on cyxlooxygenase (COX-1 and COX-2) inhibitor research including the latest technical developments concerning the relevance of COX-2...
Synapses, those miniscule voids between neurons, or neurons and muscles, are an essential part of any nervous system—without them signals traveling along axons, the action potentials, will not propagate along their intended paths...
New methods are being developed to draw up maps of gene expression in the brain that provide a glimpse of networks of jointly regulated genes and help identify control regions for such networks. Read about this approach tested on a Parkinson's mouse model.
Anyone interested in studying protein-protein interactions in a high-throughput manner may want to read about this new method to use catalytic RNAs that can measure protein-protein interactions in real time.
Two proteins—the recently described aph-1 gene product as well as a novel protein - likely play a role in the production of amyloid-beta (Aβ) via the presenilin/γ-secretase pathway....
The scientific program of this year’s meeting (in Palm Beach, FL) reflected the high interest of the ASN in neurodegenerative diseases in general, and in Alzheimer's disease (AD) research in particular...
In a small, preliminary study, researchers have found that the Alzheimer's drug donepezil (Aricept) can slightly improve the performance of older airline pilots on a flight simulator....
The immediate future of hormone replacement therapy in the treatment or prevention of diseases does not look promising. A large-scale, prospective study...
Brian Balin and colleagues at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine presented data showing that chlamydia isolated from Alzheimer’s brain, cultured, and then sprayed into the noses of young wild-type BALB/c mice can cause progressive deposition of amyloid plaques...
Are two new proteins the missing links to understand the γ-secretase complex? Research presented today at the 8th International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders in Stockholm suggests as much. Are more components yet to be discovered?