ST. LOUIS, Missouri – Amy Thomas was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis 13 years ago. “It’s just another component of my life to manage. It’s not defining who I am.” She regularly gets blood drawn to measure the benefits of intermittent fasting. In a study measuring the benefits of intermittent fasting, she eats non-starchy vegetables two days a week. […]
Few drugs have been approved for treatment of this dementia, and none works very well. It has become one of the most intractable problems in medicine.
Large, glossy oil paintings of people enjoying the small pleasures of everyday life – reading, practicing martial arts, scooping ice cream – line the hallways in the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Upon close inspection, some of the features of the people in the portraits are […]
Abequest by the late Daniel J. Brennan, MD, is supporting significant advancements in Alzheimer’s disease research at the School of Medicine. The disease affects 5.5 million Americans — a number expected to climb rapidly as people live longer. Following Brennan’s death in 2010, the estate gift created the Daniel J. Brennan, MD, Research Fund in […]
A blood test can detect whether plaques of beta-amyloid are building up in a person’s brain – a sign that they may develop Alzheimer’s disease. People with Alzheimer’s disease tend to have sticky clumps of beta-amyloid in their brains, although the part these plaques play in the condition is unclear. Until now, the only way […]
Decades before people with Alzheimer’s disease develop memory loss and confusion, their brains become dotted with plaques made of a sticky protein – called amyloid beta – that is thought to contribute to the disease and its progression. Currently, the only way to detect amyloid beta in the brain is via PET scanning, which is […]
In 2015, the global cost of Alzheimer’s disease was US$818 billion. That’s similar to the gross domestic product of the world’s 18th-largest economy. By 2030, the number of people with the disease is expected to rise to more than 70 million worldwide (see ‘Staying ahead’).
![One February 25, 2015, Lori DeMoe McIntyre died of Alzheimer’s disease at age 56, after participating in DIAN research for nearly eight years. Her daughter Jessica McIntyre memorialized her mom with a large tattoo of Lori’s amyloid PIB PET scan. The younger McIntyre and one of her sisters participate in DIAN and DIAN-TU. [Courtesy of Jessica McIntyre, art by Joey Borger, Certified Customs, Denver, Colorado.]](https://neurology.wustl.edu/app/uploads/2022/06/image-17-300x210.png)
Part 1 of a five-part series. At age 8, DIAN has grown up. In 2008, when the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network formally began to study autosomal-dominant AD, the notion of assembling globally dispersed families afflicted with this rare form of AD into a standing research platform seemed radical to observers. In theory, the idea of […]
Katherine Du/NPRThe first time Kit Parker’s phone rang, everything seemed fine. It was January 2006, and Parker’s old Army buddy Chris Moroski was calling to say hi. Parker and Moroski had jumped out of airplanes together in the 1990s when they were paratroopers in the National Guard. But after the attacks on Sept. 11, Parker […]
About 100 times rarer than Parkinson’s, and often mistaken for it, progressive supranuclear palsy afflicts fewer than 20,000 people in the U.S.—and two thirds do not even know they have it. Yet this little-known brain disorder that killed comic actor Dudley Moore in 2002 is quietly becoming a gateway for research that could lead to […]