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.

The best news

[Sunburnt]

I'm normally quite sarcastic when posting.

Not now. Alzheimer's Disease is one of the most horrifying maladies faced in societies where people live long enough to suffer from it.

I hope that this research pans out into practical treatment. Being betrayed by the body is terrible enough later in life.

Re:what so horrifying about it?

[mce]

Oh yes you do. Maybe not any more by the time you're almost completely gone. And also not when it all first starts (slowly). But in between there is a period when you're aware of what's happening and still lucid enough to understand. That phase is the true torture period for the person affected.

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.

Longer 'til retirement.

[Original Replica]

One should wonder if people will demand longer careers (past their 70s) to pay for this extension of life too.

As socialized medicine seems just around the corner and the social security system is already in danger, I would go so far as to say longer careers should be strongly encouraged, and the social security age should be slowly raised. To pay for all of this we are going to need more cash going into the common government funds, and I don't fancy paying a 50% tax/S.S. rate to cover a bunch of Baby Boomers who retired at 60. As the infirmities of age are pushed back so should the accepted retirement age be pushed back. We already spend the first 20 years of our lives not contributing materially to society, I don't think we should also spend the last 20 years on an open ended vacation unless it can be paid for 100% out of pocket. While I think this is a wonderful medical advancement (there is a history of Alzheimer's in my family), it does in a way add to the impending problems the western world faces in it's growing elderly population.

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[Sunburnt]

Sure early Alzheimers must be a bit frustrating for the sufferer, but this is tempered by a loss of cognitive function (ie. you don't necessarily realise that you have the condition).

In my secondhand experience, that is only a consolation once the disease is terminal. Before that point lies a great deal of suffering spread out over years, without any hope for even a partial rehabilitation.

Perhaps we should allow people to die earlier with dignity.

Death with dignity is an important right. To me, it's almost as compelling as the possibility of living longer with dignity. That's why this research is so important.

Re:what so horrifying about it?

[Sunburnt]

You don't feel any "suffering", and even if you did,you wouldn't remember it.

First off, that's not exactly true, as a couple other commenters have indicated.

Secondly: it's not all about you. I said it's a terrible disease for society. That means not only the people who descend into grey terrors and death, but the loved ones who must bear with them through their suffering. People who will never suffer from Alzheimer's benefit from this research as well.

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[Trogre]

How about spending every day convinced that you're eight years old, and that your (long dead) parents have abandoned you in a strange place?

Re:Longer 'til retirement.

[Bonobo_Unknown]

In the USA you could have had all this (zero cost at point of service medicine for everyone). They decided to have a war in Iraq instead.

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:A couple big questions though...

[skoaldipper]

[..]or whatever amyloidogenic protein you like) correlate well with neurodegeneration. But whether those are the cause or not is still a very open question.

Didn't they link mad cow disease to a protein as well? I believe they ruled out microbial agents there as the principiant. So, if the common post symptomatic link is protein deposits, then what are some of those possible precursors leading to them?

Personally, I never understood the need for aluminum in any bio absorbable product. In part, that's why I use specific deodorant brands not containing any derivative of it.

Re:Great! now more people will die of cancer

[knewter]

Your mind seems awfully warped. Recognize this for what it is: an intriguing discovery with the possibility of solving a problem. If on the whole people are worse off for the treatment, we should rationally expect that it won't become widespread. So stop being a dick and just say 'hey this is really cool.'

I used to be constantly pessimistic like this. I'm trying to get over it. Solving problems / learning more truths == good.

Re:Horrifying thought

[Sunburnt]

3 Billion men alert vital and virile well into their 100's. That should be good for the planet.

We're already at 3 billion men (and over 3 billion women, for that matter.) "Vital" and "virile" might be a longshot, and unrelated to the research in question, but "alert" (or "not senile") probably wouldn't be a negative.

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[Squarewav]

Sadly Hollywood and TV make it look like Alzheimer's is nothing more then memory loss.

I live with my parents now to take care of my dad who has early onset late stage Alzheimer's. he most def knows something is wrong with him. He is unable to speak and it frustrates him to no end. He can't find the bathroom and we (me and my mom) have to figure out that he needs it and lead him to it. Even the most basic things like putting on his pants is a nightmarish exp for him.

Its not the watching some one fade away that makes things hard on the family. Its watching someone exp hell on earth and not being able to do a damn thing about it

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.

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[rilister]

wow, that's a shockingly ignorant statement. Commenting on Slashdot on graphic cards when you no nothing about it is one thing, but on fatal diseases is a different kind of thing, dude.

A 'bit frustrating'? Most people are diagnosed a year or so into onset, but there's no real way of knowing when the disease starts. For many patients, there's literally (like, 5) years of knowing a) you have a disease that is 100% fatal and that you will gradually forget the names and faces of the people you love. b) you will eventually become a terrible burden on those same people, you will treat them badly and they will get to watch as you regress to less than a child. c) gradually losing all the mental faculties that you take for granted every day, knowing exactly why for several years.

It's terrible, frightening death sentence where the patient's personality is dismantled piece-by-piece, moving slowly to death, with their families watching helplessly on.

I've worked with patients with a number of chronic and fatal diseases (cancer, AIDS, etc...) and nothing would scare me more than a diagnosis of Alzheimer's.

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[vidarh]

A "bit frustrating"? Try years of living in fear of whats happening and shame of not being able to function properly and desperately trying to hide it. It's not how it plays out for all Alzheimers sufferers, but it's a fairly normal way for it to start.

Both my grandmothers went down that route. One of them managed to hide it from her husband until he was meant to go to hospital for a minor operation. Then her world collapsed, because she knew she wouldn't be able to handle things alone while he was away, and she refused to get out of bed, and she never did again - she lived another ten years with rapidly declining mental faculties and rapidly accelerating memory loss, but was certainly aware of it for another year or two.

The other, we realized after she was diagnosed, had been hiding her declining memory for years by excusing any memory problem by claiming she had "just taken pain medication" for some of her other health problems. Others hide it by writing notes to assist them, or learning to talk and ask questions in ways designed to avoid admitting they've forgotten something.

Remember those horrible moments in school, when you'd forgotten something very obvious and got asked about it, and knew or thought everyone else would think you were an idiot if you answered wrongly? Now imagine every conversation you have for several years being like that.

Re:what so horrifying about it?

[vidarh]

If you have worked in group homes, you have mostly seen people in the late stages of Alzheimers, not the often years of declining faculties that go before that, when memory has still not gone so much that they can't function and work around it, but with the downside that many of them constantly still know exactly what is happening to them.

Alzheimers is associated with a lot of depression and also with a lot of really aggressive behavior for those reasons.

Neither of my grandmothers seemed depressed about it for long after they were diagnosed. But by then they'd started declining so rapidly, and lost so much of their memory, that they were essentially "gone" - their lives were reduced to five minute sliding windows of attention combined with some remnants of their long term memory, and they quickly lost that too.

Those weren't the horrible years for them. They five or so years before that were the bad ones, and we only realized how bad it was once we got the diagnosis and started thinking back to how they'd behaved over those preceding years.

But for both of them they were terrified for weeks or months around the time when their functional level got so low that they needed to be taken into care. My grandfather on my moms side had to struggle for a couple of months to get my grandmother to agree to even see a doctor when they both knew what was happening, and had to struggle for further weeks to get her admitted, as she kept refusing.