RESEARCH NEWS 2019-08-27 Research News First, the good news: A healthy lifestyle in your so-called golden years shaves a third off your dementia risk. Now, the bad: If your genetic predisposition for dementia is high, you reap no such reward. In an observational study published A
RESEARCH NEWS 2019-08-25 Research News Complement proteins may be helpful when it comes to rallying clearance of hazardous debris from the brain, but scientists believe the immune activators can also inflict irreparable damage to neurons and their synapses. A paper published Augu
RESEARCH NEWS 2019-08-23 Research News Mounting evidence suggests midlife hypertension negatively affects late-life cognition and that treating it could help. Three new papers support this idea. In the August 20 Lancet, researchers led by Marcus Richards, Nick Fox, and Jonathan S
RESEARCH NEWS 2019-08-23 Research News With single-cell resolution, scientists now have a good idea of what amyloid plaques do to nearby cells in the brains of mice. Scientists led by Bart De Strooper, KU Leuven, Belgium, used a combination of spatial transcriptomics and in situ
RESEARCH NEWS 2019-08-23 Research News Microglia in the brain assume a dizzying array of states. Now researchers led by Tony Wyss-Coray at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, describe a new one: lipid droplet-accumulating microglia (LAM). These lipid-stuffed cells resembl
CONFERENCE COVERAGE 2019-08-22 Conference Coverage In the last three decades, scientists have made strides in using biomarkers to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and track its progression. Along with cerebrospinal fluid Aβ, tau, and phospho-tau, a handful of new markers, such as neurofila
CONFERENCE COVERAGE 2019-08-22 Conference Coverage Plasma tests for Aβ and phospho-tau may have stolen the show at this year’s Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, held July 14-18 in Los Angeles, but proteomic and synaptic markers were not that far behind. A neural pentrax
CONFERENCE COVERAGE 2019-08-21 Conference Coverage At the AAIC conference held July 14–18 in Los Angeles, Kaj Blennow of the University of Gothenburg had his hands full trying to get researchers in the field engaged in the nitpicky drudgery of validation, standardization, and commutabi
CONFERENCE COVERAGE 2019-08-21 Conference Coverage In the short space of two years, the erstwhile fantasy of a blood test for Alzheimer’s disease has become reality. Or so it seems. At the 2017 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London, Randall Bateman, Washington Univ
CONFERENCE COVERAGE 2019-08-20 Conference Coverage From day one at this year’s AAIC, held July 14-18 in Los Angeles, conference halls and corridors buzzed with the sound of “p-tau.” Scientists from Randall Bateman ’s lab at Washington University, St. Louis, reported that among voluntee
CONFERENCE COVERAGE 2019-08-20 Conference Coverage Just as labs around the globe are racing to start marketing plasma Aβ tests, along come new contenders to rattle the field. At this year’s AAIC, held July 14-18 in Los Angeles, scientists reported that certain amino acids on the protei
RESEARCH NEWS 2019-08-19 Research News Faltering endosomal trafficking appears to be the common modus operandi by a range of familial Alzheimer’s mutations. In the August 14 Neuron, researchers led by Marc Tessier-Lavigne of Stanford University reported initial findings from a pa
RESEARCH NEWS 2019-08-16 Research News ApoE4 predisposes people to Alzheimer’s disease by modulating astrocytes and microglia, suggest researchers led by Julia TCW and Alison Goate at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. In a preprint on bioRχiv, the researchers
RESEARCH NEWS 2019-08-15 Research News Variants in the MS4A gene cluster influence AD risk, at least in part, by tweaking levels of another AD risk factor, TREM2. In a study published in Science Translational Medicine on August 14, researchers co-led by Bruno Benitez, Celeste Kar
CONFERENCE COVERAGE 2019-08-15 Conference Coverage At one end of the Alzheimer’s disease genetic spectrum lie the catastrophic mutations in APP and presenilin that lead to autosomal-dominant, early onset AD. At the other end are dozens of common variants that each contribute a smidgen