Alzheimer’s disease tagged posts

3-4 cups of Coffee a day linked to Longer Life

Three or 4 cups a day confers greatest benefit, except in pregnancy and for women at risk of fracture. Drinking coffee is “more likely to benefit health than to harm it” for a range of health outcomes, say researchers in The BMJ today. They bring together evidence from over 200 studies and find that drinking 3 to 4 cups of coffee a day is associated with a lower risk of death and getting heart disease compared with drinking no coffee. Coffee drinking is also associated with lower risk of some cancers, diabetes, liver disease and dementia.

However, they say drinking coffee in pregnancy may be associated with harms, and may be linked to a very small increased risk of fracture in women...

This image shows DAG (green-labeled peptide) targeting to the brain blood vessel (labeled red) in the hippocampus of the Alzheimer brain. Credit: Ruoslahti Lab, SBP

Peptide recognizes vasculature associated with brain inflammation. Researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) have identified a peptide that could lead to the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The discovery, published in Nature Communications, may also provide a means of homing drugs to diseased areas of the brain to treat AD, Parkinson’s disease, as well as glioblastoma, brain injuries and stroke.

“We have identified a peptide (DAG) that recognizes a protein that is elevated in the brain blood vessels of AD mice and human patients...

UT Southwestern researchers have developed a DNA vaccine that helps the body protect against toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease. These images show amyloid plaque in the mouse brain using plasma containing anti-amyloid antibody from large mammals immunized with the vaccine. Credit: UT Southwestern

A new DNA vaccine when delivered to the skin prompts an immune response that produces antibodies to protect against toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease – without triggering severe brain swelling that earlier antibody treatments caused in some patients. Two studies from the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute demonstrate in animals how a vaccine containing DNA of the toxic beta-amyloid protein elicits a different immune response that may be safe for humans...

New research correlates sugary drinks—as well as diet soda—to smaller brain volume and memory deficits. Photo by RapidEye/iStock

Both sugary, diet drinks correlated with accelerated brain aging. Researchers using data from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) found that people who drink sugary beverages frequently are more likely to have poorer memory, smaller overall brain volume, and a significantly smaller hippocampus. A follow-up study found that people who drank diet soda daily were almost 3X as likely to develop stroke and dementia when compared to those who did not.

Researchers are quick to point out that these findings, which appear separately in the journals Alzheimer’s & Dementia and Stroke, demonstrate correlation but not cause-and-effect...