Complications (1)
- Alzheimer's: Managing sleep problems
Coping and support (3)
- Caregiving: Tips for long-distance caregivers
- Caregiver stress: Tips for taking care of yourself
- Alzheimer's: Planning for the holidays
Definition (1)
- Early-onset Alzheimer's: When symptoms begin before 65
Prevention (1)
- Home safety tips: Preparing for Alzheimer's caregiving
Risk factors (2)
- Diabetes and Alzheimer's linked
- Alzheimer's genes: Are you at risk?
Symptoms (3)
- Memory loss: When to seek help
- Alzheimer's stages: How the disease progresses
- Alzheimer's or depression: Could it be both?
Tests and diagnosis (4)
- Diagnosing Alzheimer's: An interview with a Mayo Clinic specialist
- Sharing Alzheimer's diagnosis: Tips for caregivers
- Positron emission tomography (PET) scan
- see all in Tests and diagnosis
Treatments and drugs (3)
- Alzheimer's: 7 tips for medical visits
- Alzheimer's: Drugs help manage symptoms
- Alzheimer's treatments: What's on the horizon?
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Alzheimer's treatments: What's on the horizon?
Reducing inflammation
Alzheimer's causes chronic, low-level brain cell inflammation. Based on success in treating inflammation elsewhere in the body, researchers are attempting to develop drugs that zero in on specific inflammatory processes at work in Alzheimer's disease.
Capitalizing on the heart-head connection
Growing evidence suggests that brain health is closely linked to heart and blood vessel health. Your brain is nourished by your arteries. The risk of developing Alzheimer's appears to increase as a result of many conditions that damage the heart or arteries. These include high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and high cholesterol. In addition, the strongest known genetic Alzheimer's risk factor is one form of a gene for apolipoprotein E, a protein that carries cholesterol in the blood.
A number of studies are exploring how best to capitalize on this heart-head connection. Strategies under investigation include:
- Current drugs for heart disease risk factors. Researchers are investigating whether drugs currently used to treat high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol may also help people with Alzheimer's or reduce the risk of developing the disease.
- Drugs aimed at new targets. Additional projects are looking more closely at how the connection between heart disease and Alzheimer's works at the molecular level to find new drug targets.
- Heart-healthy lifestyle choices. Still other studies are exploring whether lifestyle choices with known heart benefits, such as exercising on most days and eating a heart-healthy diet, also may help prevent Alzheimer's disease or delay its onset.
Speeding treatment development
Developing new medications is a slow and painstaking process. The pace can be especially frustrating for individuals with Alzheimer's and their families who are waiting for good news about fresh treatment options. To help accelerate discovery, the Coalition Against Major Diseases (CAMD), an alliance of pharmaceutical companies, nonprofit foundations and government advisers, have forged a first-of-its-kind partnership to share data from Alzheimer's clinical trials in which the experimental treatments didn't work as hoped. Researchers anticipate that sharing these data from more than 4,000 study participants will speed development of more effective therapies.
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