Tag Archives: research

Scientists in the US today revealed the finding of a clinical trial investigating the effects of “exergaming”, or virtual reality-enhanced exercise, on cognition in a group of older adults. The study, one of the first trials of its kind, showed greater cognitive benefit for those who played exergames than those who took part in traditional exercise.

Of those participants who were enrolled, 63 completed the three month study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. All of the volunteers, aged between 58 and 99 years, rode exercise bikes an average of three times a week. Half of the volunteers rode a traditional exercise bike, whereas half rode a bike equipped with a virtual reality display. This ‘cybercycle’ provided users with 3D tours and allowed them to compete against an avatar of their last performance.

The volunteers were given cognitive assessments at the start of the study and after one and three months. Although there was no difference in exercise frequency, duration and intensity between the two groups, the cybercyclists performed better on a number of cognitive tests. In addition, fewer of the cybercyclists went on to develop mild cognitive impairment, a state of early cognitive impairment not quite severe enough to be diagnosed as dementia.

The scientists also analysed blood samples from 30 of the volunteers for a protective protein called brain-derived neurotrophic growth factor (BDNF). They found higher levels of the BDNF protein in the blood of the cybercyclists than those taking traditional exercise, suggesting that virtual reality-enhanced exercise may stimulate a greater physiological effect in the brain.

Dr Marie Janson of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said:
“We already know that exercise is an important way to keep body and mind healthy. The results from this small study suggest that combining physical and mental exercise through exergaming could have even more beneficial effects on cognition in older adults than normal exercise alone. Larger and more detailed studies will be needed to get to the bottom of exactly what aspect of exergaming could be giving the benefit, but the early results are very interesting.

“Although it may be unrealistic to expect people to invest in exergaming technology, the findings show that both mental and physical exercise are important in keeping our minds active in old age. With 820,000 people in the UK already living with dementia, and an increasingly ageing population, it is important that we invest in research into preventative strategies that could help to maintain our cognition for that little bit longer.”

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Scientists in Northern Ireland have found drugs that mimic some of the actions of insulin may encourage the growth of new brain cells. It’s hoped the study, funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK, could pave the way for the design of new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers at the University of Ulster’s Coleraine Campus studied the effects of two compounds in mice. These compounds were designed to imitate the effects of a hormone called glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP), which helps cells to release insulin.

It’s known that people with diabetes, who are unable to produce enough insulin or are unable to use insulin properly, have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Previous research has suggested that GIP may also help protect the brain, and the team in Coleraine set out to discover what effect compounds that mimic GIP could have on the brain.

Led by Dr Emilie Faivre – who was supported by a PhD Scholarship award from Alzheimer’s Research UK – the scientists used healthy mice to test two compounds called (Pro3)GIP and D-Ala2GIP. One group of mice was given a single injection of one of the two compounds, or a saline solution, while a second group received daily injections for 30 days. They discovered that for both compounds, daily injections improved communication between brain cells and triggered the growth of new cells in part of the hippocampus – the part of the brain responsible for memory. The mice also showed a small improvement in some learning and memory tasks.

The results are published in the European Journal of Pharmacology. The scientists now want to further investigate the compounds to find out whether they may be useful as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia.

Dr Faivre said:
“We were excited to see that the compounds we studied appear to have beneficial effects for the brain, but we now need to find out what effect they might have in Alzheimer’s disease. We know that diabetes is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s, and if we can understand exactly how these compounds work in the brain, we could also uncover new clues about the links between these two diseases. We still desperately need an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s, and I hope our results could take us a step closer to that goal.”

Prof Christian Hölscher, who co-authored the study, said:
“Finding ways to protect brain cells and keep them communicating could be an important step forward for fighting Alzheimer’s. More research is needed before these compounds could be tested in people, and the next step will be to investigate what causes them to affect the brain in this way. Dementia can only be defeated through research, and we hope these findings could eventually open the door to new treatments.”

Dr Simon Ridley, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said:
“These findings could be an important first step towards the development of new treatments for Alzheimer’s, and we now need to see whether drugs like this are able to help people with the disease. There are 16,000 people with dementia in Northern Ireland alone, yet research into the condition is desperately underfunded. It’s vital that we invest in research so that we can build on results like these, giving us a better chance of taking new treatments from the lab to the clinic.”

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Scientists in the US today announced clinical trial results showing that nicotine patches may improve cognitive performance in elderly people with early memory problems. The findings could take scientists a step closer to the development of new treatments to tackle dementia.

The study, published in the journal Neurology, was completed by 67 volunteers. All of the volunteers were non-smokers and had mild cognitive impairment (MCI), thinking and memory problems not yet severe enough to be diagnosed as dementia. Half of the volunteers wore a transdermal nicotine patch for the six month trial, while half wore a placebo patch which did not contain nicotine.

Nicotine, a chemical found in tobacco, is known to stimulate nerve cells in the brain – one reason why cigarettes are so addictive. Some of the nerve cells which are stimulated by nicotine in the brain play a role in preserving cognitive function and these cells can have trouble firing in people with Alzheimer’s. This had led some scientists to believe that nicotine may hold a clue to how to get these cells firing again.

Over the course of the trial, the volunteers took several different types of memory and performance test and the researchers followed their performance. The results showed that, although there was no significant difference in overall improvement between those with nicotine patches and placebo, volunteers with the nicotine patch performed better on specific tests of long term memory and attention.

Although a nicotine-based therapy is unlikely to prevent or cure the disease, the scientists hope it could in future present a way of slowing the progression from MCI to Alzheimer’s and treating some of the symptoms of the disease.

Dr Simon Ridley, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, the UK’s leading dementia research charity, said:
“This small study looks promising as people with MCI treated with nicotine patches showed improvements in several cognitive tests. Larger and longer term studies will be needed to get a bigger picture of the potential of nicotine-based treatments in Alzheimer’s. As we know, nicotine is highly addictive and smoking can increase our risk of Alzheimer’s as well as other serious diseases, and so we must interpret the results sensibly.

“We hope that the findings can push scientists towards developing safe and effective therapies to tackle dementia, and with 820,000 people in the UK living with dementia, this need has never been greater.”

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Scientists in the US have used stem cells from patients to overcome the challenge of obtaining live brain cells, allowing them to learn more about the causes of Alzheimer’s. The study, published online today in the journal Nature, provides new opportunities for scientists to model the complex disease.

Induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, are cells which have been taken from one part of the body and can be reprogrammed into other cell types. They allow scientists to overcome the challenge of obtaining live cells from the brain – as they can take skin cells from people and transform them into brain cells.

The scientists used iPSCs to investigate what goes wrong in brain cells of people with both late-onset Alzheimer’s, and those with familial Alzheimer’s – an inherited form which tends to affect people at a younger age. Skin cells (or fibroblasts) were obtained from two people with familial Alzheimer’s, two people with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and two people without dementia to act as controls. The fibroblast cells were transformed into brain nerve cells in the lab and the scientists looked for features of Alzheimer’s in these cells.

The study showed that nerve cells derived from the two volunteers with familial Alzheimer’s and one of those with late-onset Alzheimer’s produced high levels of amyloid and tau, two characteristic proteins involved in Alzheimer’s. They also produced high levels of a protein called active GSK-3β which can be responsible for turning tau into its more toxic form. They also found that one particular inhibitor of amyloid production could reduce the levels of all three proteins in these cells.

Dr Simon Ridley, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said:
“Induced pluripotent stem cells have the potential to provide a great resource for scientists to study diseases such as Alzheimer’s – where getting access to human brain cells to study is a huge challenge. The authors have shown that these cells can reveal vital clues about the biological changes taking place during Alzheimer’s and we hope further studies can expand on these early findings.

“In light of the recent European ban on patents using human embryonic stem cells, it may prove important to increase our use of technology using these non-embryonic stem cells. We hope that studies like this one will drive scientific research forward and help us to understand the biology behind different forms of Alzheimer’s and test new treatments. With 820,000 in the UK living with dementia, the need for such research has never been greater.”

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Scientists at the University of Cambridge have developed a new and innovative way to study Alzheimer’s disease in the lab. The stem cell technique, which allows researchers to track the disease over a matter of weeks, could provide a valuable tool for scientists to unravel the complexity of Alzheimer’s and test potential new treatments. The findings, funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK and the Wellcome Trust, will be published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The scientists used skin cells donated from healthy volunteers and those with Down’s syndrome and turned them into stem cells. These stem cells were then used to generate networks of functioning nerve cells in the lab, which resemble the complex wiring of cells in the human cerebral cortex. The cortex, which makes up over three quarters of the brain, houses many of the nerve cells involved in memory and thinking and suffers particular damage during Alzheimer’s.

People with Down’s syndrome have an extra copy of chromosome 21, a segment of DNA that carries a gene responsible for producing the Alzheimer’s protein amyloid. Due to this extra version of the gene, people with Down’s syndrome have a much higher incidence of Alzheimer’s than the rest of the population. By generating nerve cells from skin cells of people with Down’s syndrome, the scientists could observe the disease process over a period of weeks and compare this to those cells derived from healthy volunteers.

Dr Rick Livesey, who led the study at the Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge, said:

“One of the biggest challenges facing dementia researchers at the moment is a lack of good ways to track the disease over time. By using stem cells donated from people with Down’s syndrome – who are much more likely to develop Alzheimer’s – we have been able to track how the disease develops over a shorter time period than has been possible in the past.”

Within 28 days, the nerve cells made from people with Down’s syndrome showed more than double the amount of the Alzheimer’s protein amyloid than those from healthy volunteers and this built up into amyloid plaques within two months. The scientists also observed that a protein called tau became abnormally altered and distributed in the cells- one of the common later-stage characteristics of the disease.

Dr Livesey added:

“What is promising about this stem cell technique is that we can create functioning human cortex cells in a dish, allowing us to more closely model what is happening in our brains. Not only this, but our new model shows many of the characteristic features of human Alzheimer’s disease and will allow us to test new treatments more easily.”

Dr Simon Ridley, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, the UK’s leading dementia research charity, welcomed the findings. He said:

“We are pleased to have contributed funding towards this study and we hope it can be used to unravel some of the remaining questions about how Alzheimer’s progresses. Modelling a complex disease like Alzheimer’s is a big challenge, but innovative approaches like this can improve our understanding. As the stem cells in this study were donated by people with Down’s syndrome, they differ genetically to the rest of the population, but could still offer valuable insight into the disease processes in Alzheimer’s.

“Increasing our understanding of dementia is essential not only for people with Down’s syndrome, but for the 820,000 people across the UK living with the condition. It is essential that we improve the models that we have for understanding dementia, but this can only be done through research. As dementia research is so desperately underfunded, we must invest now if we are to find the answers that are so urgently needed.”

For further information, or to speak with Dr Rick Livesey or Dr Simon Ridley, please contact Laura Phipps, Science Communications Officer at Alzheimer’s Research UK on 01223 843304, mobile 07500 803936 or email press@alzheimersresearchuk.org  

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US scientists have found that men may be at higher risk than women of mild cognitive impairment – a stage that often precedes dementia. The study is published online in the journal Neurology.

Researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, studied 1,450 people between the ages of 70 and 89, for an average of three years. Participants took part in evaluations every 15 months to assess whether or not they had mild cognitive impairment (MCI). MCI causes problems with memory and other thinking skills, but not to an extent that interferes with everyday life. Roughly half of all people who are diagnosed with MCI go on to develop dementia, usually Alzheimer’s disease, within five years.

Over the course of the study, 296 people were diagnosed with MCI, but the researchers found that men were more likely to develop the condition than women. The results were surprising because previous research has shown women are more likely to develop dementia than men.

Further analysis showed that MCI with memory loss – known as amnestic MCI – was more common than non-amnestic MCI, where memory loss is not a major symptom. People who had less education or were not married were also more likely to develop MCI. The scientists suggest that further research could reveal whether different risk factors affect separate groups of people in different ways.

Dr Marie Janson, Director of Development at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said:
“These surprising results suggest that men may be at greater risk for MCI despite having a lower risk for dementia, and it will be important to see whether further studies can replicate these findings. A key goal for research is to identify why some people with MCI develop dementia while others don’t. If we can understand why some people have a greater risk for cognitive decline and dementia, we stand a better chance of being able to prevent the condition.

“With 820,000 people affected by dementia, and a rapidly ageing population, the need for research to find new ways to treat and prevent the condition has never been more urgent.”

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