Alzheimer’s disease is practically unheard of in adults younger than 40, and very rare (one in 2,500) for those under 60. It affects 1 percent of 65-year-olds, 2 percent of 68-year-olds, 3 percent of 70-year-olds. After that, the odds start multiplying. The likelihood of your developing Alzheimer’s more or less doubles every five years past 65. Should you make it to 85, you will have, roughly, a fifty-fifty shot at remaining sane.
There aren’t many games out there that focus on raising awareness of Alzheimer’s, but Alz, a experimental game-slash-film, is a beautifully simple insight into the implications of the condition for both the sufferer and their loved ones.
The game is a simple walkthrough, in which players control of a faceless man whose surroundings glitch and flash in and out of focus as he attempts to make sense of the world. Bus journeys become insumountable obstacles and recognisable faces become strangers: his wife tells him she loves him and he simply refers to her as a “large something – what is it for, why is she here?”
The data indicate that there is a prolonged period in which amyloid beta is forming plaques in the brain without the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, the authors said. Even before dementia sets in, shrinkage in the part of the brain linked to memory … See all stories on this topic »
An increase in brain inflammation, such as that caused by age, diabetes and obesity, is known to increase risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease. Now scientists at UK’s Southampton University are about to start a three-year study, using brain tissue generously donated by people who died with Alzheimer’s disease, to see if inflammation caused by infections such as those of the urinary tract or chest, also speeds up progress of the disease.
Source: Do Infections Speed Up Alzheimer’s?
Natural chemicals found in green tea and red wine may disrupt a key step of the Alzheimer’s disease pathway, according to new research from the University of Leeds.
In early-stage laboratory experiments, the researchers identified the process which allows harmful clumps of protein to latch on to brain cells, causing them to die. They were able to interrupt this pathway using the purified extracts of EGCG from green tea and resveratrol from red wine.
Source: Green tea and red wine extracts interrupt Alzheimer’s disease pathway in cells
British researchers are developing a drug which they hope could stop Alzheimer’s before it seriously affects a person’s mental abilities.
Natural chemicals found in green tea and red wine may disrupt a key step of the Alzheimer’s disease pathway, according to new research from the University of Leeds.