From caregivers going it alone to understaffed nursing homes on lockdown, people with neurodegenerative disease and their caregivers are feeling enormous strain from the novel coronavirus. They are adapting to the new normal with technology.
Two papers report that phosphorylated tau in the blood distinguishes people with AD from healthy controls and from people with frontotemporal and vascular dementias.
Data shown at AAT-AD/PD explain why the DIAN-TU trial missed its primary endpoint. But gantenerumab strongly reduced plaques, tau, phospho-tau, and slowed NfL. This result prompted an open-label extension, sustaining hope for efficacy.
The AAT-AD/PD conference hosted a virtual conversation about what the trial’s disappointing cognitive and tantalizing biomarker data might mean. Hidden between thank you’s and pledges to stay committed were substantive points of debate and context.
Scientists report at AAT-AD/PD that they tightened a causal connection between gut microbes, microglial function, and protein deposits. In mice, that is.
For people with Parkinson’s, carrying Alzheimer’s genetic risk variants upped their odds of harboring Aβ and tau pathology and getting dementia. In people with DLB, Aβ plaques worsened tau and Lewy pathology, and cognition.
In a mouse model of amyloidosis, human wild-type TREM2 kept Aβ deposition at bay early on, but this defense became overwhelmed as plaques grew. The R47H AD risk variant never offered protection early on, and made things worse later.
In nonhuman primates, three classes of LRRK2 kinase inhibitor cause microscopic changes in lung morphology, but they are reversible and do not impair breathing. Parkinson’s programs remain on track.