Following on from yesterdays post about the discovery of 2 new genes associated with Alzheimers. Today’s New Scientist features the article  New look at Alzheimer’s could revolutionize treatment.

Alzheimer’s has long been blamed on the fatty amyloid plaques that accumulate in the brain, but recent clinical trials suggest other processes may be at work.
Last year, Clive Holmes and his colleagues at the University of Southampton, UK, examined the brains of dead patients who’d received a vaccine that primes the immune system to attack amyloid plaques. Although the plaques had gone in most patients, in life their symptoms hadn’t diminished (The Lancet, vol 372, p 216).
Also disappointing was the performance of tarenflurbil (Flurizan), a drug designed to attack plaques. Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City, Utah, announced last year that it was suspending the $200 million trial of the drug, the largest ever of an Alzheimer’s treatment, after it failed to deliver significant improvements in memory, cognition or people’s ability to care for themselves. Meanwhile, drugs targeting other processes have shown success. The most tantalising news comes from trials of dimebolin, a hayfever treatment developed decades ago in Russia. Results from a trial published last year in The Lancet (vol 372, p 207) showed that patients taking the drug scored 7 points higher in standard tests of cognitive abilities compared with those on placebo, a substantial improvement on a scale of 70. As hay fever is caused by the body’s inflammation process going awry, this result chimes with gene and hospital studies published this week that suggest inflammation plays a role in Alzheimer’s (see main story) Read full article

Source: New Scientist

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The discovery of two new genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease could provide valuable new leads in the race to find treatments and possibly cures for the devastating condition, according to a leading University scientist.

Professor Julie Williams, School of Medicine, has completed the largest-ever joint Alzheimer’s disease genome-wide association study (GWAS) involving 16,000 individuals.

The study, published in Nature Genetics, uncovered two new genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Previously only one gene, APOE4, had been shown to be a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease.

The study reveals, for the first time, that two further genes, CLU and PICALM, are related to Alzheimer’s disease. [continue reading…]

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This week sees kids going back-to school.With this is mind I found this an interesting read Class Conflict: Should parents meddle in their kids’ classroom assignments
 

 

Emily Bazelon Slate writes:

The hard truth about meddling is that when parents insist on a particular class assignment for their children, they can end up helping their own kid at the expense of someone else’s. Class assignments are a zero-sum game: If your kid gets the teacher you like and escapes the mediocre or rotten alternative, another kid will be taking his place. For sure, parents talk themselves around this. They say it’s their job to put their own kids’ interests first. Or if they have an older child who has had a run-in with a teacher, they figure the family has already done its time and now deserves a break. Or they talk in code about how a teacher or a combination of classmates is just not the right fit for their child, though they’re sure the setting will do everyone else’s just fine. link to continue reading