Craig Atwood on From Menarche to Menopause: Shorter Span Linked to Higher Risk of Dementia

COMMENT Another convincing study demonstrating that the length and timing of HPG axis balance dictates neurodegeneration and cognitive decline. csa 0 ...

Craig Atwood on Do APP Knock-ins Call Overexpression Models of AD into Question?

COMMENT The research conducted by Dr. Saido and his colleagues is long overdue, relevant, and gets to the heart of the problem of using overexpressing APP models. There is now sufficient data to indicate the neurotropic properties of APP and Aβ and why strategies ...

Craig Atwood on In Aging Brain, Blood-Brain Barrier Starts Leaking in Hippocampus

COMMENT The reason for a leaky blood-brain barrier (BBB) with aging may well rest with how dysregulated the HPG axis becomes after menopause and during andropause. We have previously demonstrated that changes in the concentration of sex hormones (gonadotropins, ...

Craig Atwood on Amyloid precursor protein is a biomarker for transformed human pluripotent stem cells.

COMMENT Venkataramani and colleagues add to the growing literature regarding the role of APP in mediating stem cell fate as recently reported by Porayette et al., 2009, and Freude et al., 2011. csa 0 ...

Craig Atwood on The ageing systemic milieu negatively regulates neurogenesis and cognitive function.

COMMENT This paper supports the reproductive-cell cycle theory of aging, which indicates that reproductive endocrine dyscrasia mediates aging in all tissues via altered cell cycle signaling (Bowen and Atwood, 2004; Atwood and Bowen, 2011). The blood-borne factors ...

Craig Atwood on Impaired orthotopic glioma growth and vascularization in transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer's disease.

COMMENT The Alzheimer's Disease and Cancer Relationship These results raise the question of whether amyloid-β peptides might be useful anti-cancer agents. It also adds further support to the idea that amyloid-β has differential effects on pluripotent ...

Craig Atwood on Genetic targeting aromatase in male amyloid precursor protein transgenic mice down-regulates beta-secretase (BACE1) and prevents Alzheimer-like pathology and cognitive impairment.

COMMENT It is nice to see a paper that examines testosterone, as well as estradiol (E2). The data look compelling, although we and others have reported data that luteinizing hormone (LH) appears to be primarily responsible for modulating the processing of AβPP ...

Craig Atwood on Geneva: At Springfield Meeting, Soul-Searching About Dearth of Drugs

COMMENT Is a Therapeutic Answer to Alzheimer’s Disease Already at Hand? There is one drug that has been shown to consistently improve cognition, both as a prophylactic and as a treatment—that “drug” is 17β-estradiol (see Gleason et al., 2005 for a summary of ...

Craig Atwood on Vicious Cycle?—Neuronal Cell Division Attempts in Control and AD Brain

COMMENT Cycling to Nowhere The paper by Arendt and colleagues presents compelling evidence for DNA synthesis in terminally differentiated neurons of the AD brain, and raises a number of other questions. It is intriguing to speculate whether the increase in cyclin ...

Craig Atwood on Caloric Restriction: Eat Less, Live Longer!

COMMENT Caloric restriction has been shown to extend longevity and delay the onset of many age-related diseases in almost every species tested (Lane et al., 2002; McCay et al., 1935; Weindruch and Walford, 1988). Based on this, it would not be surprising, at ...

Craig Atwood on Metals in neurodegeneration: involvement of oxidants and oxidant-sensitive transcription factors.

COMMENT When all that shines is not golden: Metals in Alzheimer disease This review provides a good summary of the old and new mechanisms by which aluminium, zinc and lead might mediate neurotoxicity, and suggests that multiple downstream mechanism are involved. ...

Craig Atwood on Coping with Copper—Minute Amount of Metal Plagues Rabbit Brain

COMMENT Copper: A Role in AD? Recent exciting findings suggest that copper in drinking water is able to exacerbate the amyloid pathology and an associated learning deficit in the cholesterol-fed rabbit model of Alzheimer's disease (Sparks et al., 2002; ...

Craig Atwood on Coping with Copper—Minute Amount of Metal Plagues Rabbit Brain

COMMENT Coping with Copper—Minute Amount of Metal Plaques in Rabbit Brain The article by Sparks and Schreurs provides evidence that copper is the water contaminant responsible for increased neuronal and extracellular accumulation of amyloid previously reported by ...

Craig Atwood on Water quality has a pronounced effect on cholesterol-induced accumulation of Alzheimer amyloid beta (Abeta) in rabbit brain.

COMMENT Copper, Cholesterol and Amyloid-β Deposition Sparks and colleagues report the effect of dietary water quality on the deposition of amyloid plaques in non-treated and cholesterol-fed rabbits. Maintenance of rabbits on tap water versus distilled water ...

Craig Atwood on Ironing out the Role of Metals in Neurodegenerative Diseases

COMMENT Chelation as a Therapeutic for Neurodegenerative Diseases In this study by Kaur and colleagues, transgenic mice generated by the embryonic injection of a human H ferritin gene construct driven by the rat tyrosine hydroxylase promoter were shown to be less ...