Slashdot Mirror
New Alzheimer's Treatment Fully Restores Memory Function For Mice
New submitter wrp103 writes Australian researchers have come up with a non-invasive ultrasound technology [abstract] that clears the brain of neurotoxic amyloid plaques — structures that are responsible for memory loss and a decline in cognitive function in Alzheimer's patients. A slice: Publishing in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes the technique as using a particular type of ultrasound called a focused therapeutic ultrasound, which non-invasively beams sound waves into the brain tissue. By oscillating super-fast, these sound waves are able to gently open up the blood-brain barrier, which is a layer that protects the brain against bacteria, and stimulate the brain’s microglial cells to move in. Microglila cells are basically waste-removal cells, so once they get past the blood-brain barrier, they’re able to clear out the toxic beta-amyloid clumps before the blood-brain barrier is restored within a few hours.
The team reports fully restoring the memories of 75 percent of the mice they tested it on, with zero damage to the surrounding brain tissue. They found that the treated mice displayed improved performance in three memory tasks - a maze, a test to get them to recognise new objects, and one to get them to remember the places they should avoid.
Unless society develops a sudden interest in increasing the supply of confused and sickly old people, I have to assume that this treatment would be something you do(hopefully you don't have to keep repeating it ever week thereafter forever) when you first start to detect Alzheimer's type memory issues, in order to prevent them from causing any further damage to prior memory or interfering with continued new memory formation; so that there is never any significant period of discontinuity.
There will be the somewhat interested medical-ethics question of what to do after it(or some other treatment) is first demonstrated to work: Since there will already be a substantial population of Alzheimer's patients, who have lost varying degrees of prior memory and memory function because no (effective) treatment was available; there will be people, probably a lot of them (10s of thousands or more, in all likelihood, counting only countries wealthy enough that treating them is even on the table as a possibility) who have already irreplaceably lost much or all of their past memories; but could be treated such that they would remember subsequent events.
I imagine that, on the plus side, such treatment would decrease the confusion, fear, and substantial helplessness that such patients face; but that coming back with capacity for new memories but little or nothing about the past has its own challenges.
The brain blood barrier is not just a fence against bacterias (evolution would have gave us blood barriers for other critical organs). It is also there to prevent neurotransmitters to leak or to break in.
For instance, eating dopamine does not increase dopamine in the brain. If you want to increase dopamine, you can either take a drug that prevent it from being cleared, or eat a precursor that can cross the barrier like Tyrosine, or closer, L-dopa, but here the brain remain capable to regulate dopamine increase.