By the time people with Alzheimer’s disease start exhibiting difficulty remembering and thinking, the disease has been developing in their brains for two decades or more, and their brain tissue already has sustained damage. As the disease progresses, the damage accumulates, and their symptoms worsen.
Infections with the virus that causes COVID-19 are not the only cause of pandemic-related hospitalizations. Although children tend to be at lower risk of COVID-19, the number of kids with mental health and behavioral problems has exploded during the pandemic, driving an increase in pediatric hospital admissions nationwide. Stressors associated with remote schooling, fear of […]
A worldwide clinical trial aimed at finding treatments for Alzheimer’s disease has expanded to include investigational drugs targeting a harmful form of the brain protein tau. The trial, known as the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network Trials Unit (DIAN-TU) and led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, launched in 2012 as the first […]
FORT WORTH, Texas, Feb. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — The Rainwater Charitable Foundation, one of the largest independent funders of neurodegenerative disease research, today announced Dr. David M. Holtzman (the Andrew B. and Gretchen P. Jones Professor and Chair of Neurology, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis) and Dr. Celeste Karch (Associate Professor of Psychiatry, […]
As people age, a normal brain protein known as amyloid beta often starts to collect into harmful amyloid plaques in the brain. Such plaques can be the first step on the path to Alzheimer’s dementia. When they form around blood vessels in the brain, a condition known as cerebral amyloid angiopathy, the plaques also raise […]
Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will give the Gerald Medoff Visiting Professor lecture at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis on Thursday, Jan. 7. The session will be delivered online.
Fractured sleep, daytime sleepiness and other signs of disturbance in one’s circadian rhythm are common complaints of people with Alzheimer’s disease, and the problems only get worse as the disease progresses. But the reason for the link between Alzheimer’s and circadian dysfunction is not well understood.
Washington University School of Medicine’s eastern border began noticeably changing in April and will look strikingly different in 2023, when the neuroscience research building — 11 stories tall and 609,000 square feet — is complete. The building project, the largest in the medical school’s history, will span almost a block in the 200-acre Cortex Innovation […]
People with severe Parkinson’s disease or other neurological conditions that cause intractable symptoms such as uncontrollable shaking, muscle spasms, seizures, obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors are sometimes treated with electric stimulators placed inside the brain. Such stimulators are designed to interrupt aberrant signaling that causes the debilitating symptoms. The therapy, deep-brain stimulation, can provide relief […]
A team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has been funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) to study the root causes of neurodegenerative disorders.