Brain Implants Relieve Alzheimer's Damage

Genetically engineered cells implanted in mice have cleared away toxic plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease. The animals were sickened with a human gene that caused them to develop, at an accelerated rate, the disease that robs millions of elderly people of their memories. After receiving the doctored cells, the brain-muddling plaques melted away. If this works in humans, old age could be a much happier time of life.

Comments

Great News

[polyex]

I feel strongly that your mind is the most important part of your body. Its truly what makes you unique,. This research progress is great news. I just wish there was some way to get my Father treatment. Someone once told me that one of the toughest time for a child is when he realizes his parents are mortal. Over the last couple of years I have had to watch a brilliant man slowly disintegrate into a shell of his former self (all the while knowing what was happening to him and that he really had no where to escape to). If you have a heart attack, you sometimes can do something about it, with better lifestyle eating etc. or even cancer, you can fight it with therapy and perhaps have the hope to be free of it. Not the case with this disease, and the worst part is that you know its happening to you as its slowly robs you and your loved ones of your last sanctuary, yourself. Dealing with this first hand has certainly had an effects on me and my outlook on life in ways that were not apparent to me at first. Any kind of progress against this disease simply makes my day.

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[wytcld]

you don't necessarily realise that you have the condition

Have you known anyone with it? You might not realize at first why something is wrong, but you see that others are treating you as if it is. It doesn't just strike the elderly; there's an early-onset variety. You lose your job because you're losing track of details too often. Shopkeepers start to realize they can get away with shortchanging you. Your car keys become more lost at home, more often, and when you drive you get more lost, more often. When you do become convinced something serious is going wrong, the doctors tell you that it could, perhaps be Alzheimers. But they have no sure way of diagnosing it prior to an autopsy. Your health insurance company - if you didn't lose that with your job - contests your claim because your doctors can't produce a definite diagnosis. Maybe you're just depressed? Maybe you're just a malingerer? Keeping track of the details needed to contest their denials becomes almost impossibly complex for you. Some days, you start to forget to eat. Other days, you're almost your normal self. The amazing plasticity of the brain allows you to mimic normal function socially well enough that some friends don't really see anything wrong. But you've got an awful feeling there is.

If you want Alzheimers patients "to die earlier with dignity" then you'll have to start killing them, like witches, at the first sign. Because for most of them it's the first thing to seriously go wrong. And for most of them it develops very, very slowly, sliding down a slope where by the time you might wish they'd say "Kill me now, please," any such rational choice is finally behind them.

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[NoPantsJim]

My grandfather passed away from Alzheimer's complications this Summer after living on his own for around 5 years. He sure as hell knew he had it. As recently as last October he was still in amazing physical shape, running daily to the gym, working out like a maniac, and running back to his home. Even at his old age, he could still do more pull ups than I can at 22 (and I'm no slouch, 28 palms forward from dead hang, he beat me with 33).

We noticed the first signs around Christmas. He began to act in an odd way and mixed up some of our names. We insisted he go to a doctor, who then told us he was so far along in the disease that he must have been suffering from it for at least a year. When we confronted him about it he told us he was embarrassed and did not want us to take his freedom away. It was amazing how quickly he declined in the next few months.

I was always very close with him, he actually bought me the truck I currently drive and has helped pay for some of my college. The last time I saw him he didn't know who I was, and asked me to tell him about myself. I talked to him for around four hours recounting my life and the times we had spent together. At the end he started crying because he said he wanted to remember my parents and me, but couldn't. When we left that day he told us he didn't want to live anymore, and died three days later.

The reason Alzheimer's is such a horrific disease is because it is such a tarnish on the life of the individual. My grandfather was in the Navy during World War II. He was an officer and was actually present in the room during the signing of the official surrender terms on the USS Missouri on V-J day. He spent the next 15 years as a stock car racer, and then owned a chain of mechanics shops for 20 years. He raised three successful children and had several grandchildren he was very close with. But when he died, he had absolutely zero recollection of any of this.

I just know that I don't want to go out and achieve all of my goals in life only to reach an age at which I cannot recall any of them.