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.

Comments

WTF AM I DOING HERE!

[deadweight]

So..I'll find myself in a nursing home one day with no idea how I got there, my car will be sold, my pr0n erased, and my wife partying it up with the pool boy? I can see some surprises in store when they fire this up.

Re:WTF AM I DOING HERE!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Re: and then they get flowers?

[BarbaraHudson]

In the story, Charlie Gordon went back to his old job. Couldn't put up with the pity. Left. (Where he went depends on whether it's the short story or the novel).

Re:Simple Request

[ColdWetDog]

If you read and understood TFS you would note that they indeed make this inference. You'd have to read the paper to see the details.

You might want to look at an accompanying editorial for more details but here is some additional info:

The blood-brain barrier, a tightly packed layer of cells that lines the brain's blood vessels, protects it from infections, toxins, and other threats but makes the organ frustratingly hard to treat. A strategy that combines ultrasound with microscopic blood-borne bubbles can briefly open the barrier, in theory giving drugs or the immune system access to the brain. In the clinic and the lab, that promise is being evaluated.

This month, in one of the first clinical tests, Todd Mainprize, a neurosurgeon at the University of Toronto in Canada, hopes to use ultrasound to deliver a dose of chemotherapy to a malignant brain tumor. And in some of the most dramatic evidence of the technique's potential, a research team reports this week in Science Translational Medicine that they used it to rid mice of abnormal brain clumps similar to those in Alzheimer's disease, restoring lost memory and cognitive functions. If such findings can be translated from mice to humans, “it will revolutionize the way we treat brain disease,” says biophysicist Kullervo Hynynen of the Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto, who originated the ultrasound method.

Some scientists stress that rodent findings can be hard to translate to humans and caution that there are safety concerns about zapping the brain with even the low-intensity ultrasound used in the new study, which is similar to that used in diagnostic scans. Opening up the blood-brain barrier just enough to get a beneficial effect without scorching tissue, triggering an excessive immune reaction, or causing hemorrhage is the “crux,” says Brian Bacskai, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who studies Alzheimer's disease and used to work with Hynynen.

My emphasis.