Latest news with #neurodegeneration
Sky News
7 days ago
- General
- Sky News
Dementia: Sleep problems could 'double risk' of disease in later life
Problems sleeping could double the risk of developing dementia later in life, according to new research. Scientists have found that a diagnosis of a sleep disorder made people up to twice as likely to develop a neurodegenerative disease, such as dementia, in the following 15 years. The study, carried out by Cardiff University's UK Dementia Research Institute and the NIH Intramural Centre for Alzheimer's and Related Dementia (CARD) in the US, is one of the largest to date. Researchers investigated whether disrupted sleep is an early sign of neurodegeneration or makes someone more likely to develop dementia later. They used data from over one million electronic health records to map out the relationship between the different neurodegenerative diseases and sleep disorders. The risk of dementia was further increased for people recorded as experiencing multiple sleep disorders. The findings also revealed that sleep disorders increased the risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, irrespective of genetic risk. Sleep disorders and genetics are likely to be influencing the risk of diagnosis independently of each other, according to the study. Dr Emily Simmonds works as a bioinformatician at the UK Dementia Research Institute. She said scientists "wanted to understand the complicated relationship between sleep and dementia". "People living with dementia often experience sleep problems, but there is not yet enough evidence to say for sure whether poor sleep increases risk of dementia," she said. Dr Simmonds said the team "set out to see if we could figure out what order these things are happening". "By using biobank data, we had timestamped records of when people had sleep disorders, and exactly when they were subsequently diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease - rather than relying on self-reporting," she added.
Telegraph
25-05-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Brain scan to detect Alzheimer's before symptoms appear in world first
A world-first brain scanning technique could identify signs of Alzheimer's disease long before symptoms appear. The method, which analyses the cell structure of the brain, has been found to identify subtle changes in the cortical regions, including areas typically affected in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. At the moment, diagnosis of diseases such as dementia normally relies on questionnaires which show memory problems combined with MRI scans, which can show loss of brain volume. However, this means many people are diagnosed only when the disease has progressed. The British scientists behind the 'precision diagnostic tool' said it could bring hope for millions of people with concerns about dementia. Tests suggest it is able to spot disruption in the structure and function of the cortex, particularly those associated with functions such as memory, decision-making and language. The new technique, called cortical disarray measurement, uses advanced software which analyses MRI scans to pinpoint more subtle signs of neurodegeneration. British company Oxford Brain Diagnostics has now been certified to start offering the method and is in talks with private health providers about rollout. It has already been designated by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in the United States as a 'breakthrough' device. The neuroscientist behind the advances said it meant medical professionals were able to see changes in the brain far earlier, at level normally only be possible via a post-mortem examination. Over the past year, two major treatments for Alzheimer's disease have been given the green light by UK regulators. Donanemab and lecanemab are the first treatments found to slow progression of the disease. However, both have been blocked for use on the NHS on the grounds they are not cost-effective. Experts believe that diagnosing dementia early is key to making treatments more effective and helping to ensure they become more widely available. Almost 1 million people in the UK are are living with dementia, but this number is expected to reach 1.4 million by 2040. Oxford Brain Diagnostics, a spinout company from the University of Oxford, was founded by Dr Steven Chance, former associate professor of neuroscience at Oxford, and Prof Mark Jenkinson, a leading expert in brain imaging. The breakthrough was achieved after the company received funding from UK investment firm BGF and the Oxford Technology & Innovations Fund. Identify other neurodegenerative conditions Studies have found the method can detect neurodegenerative changes before any visible brain shrinkage or atrophy appears on standard imaging as well as distinguish between different types of dementia. It has also been found to predict which individuals with mild cognitive impairment are more likely to develop dementia. The platform could also help to identify other neurodegenerative conditions including Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis. Dr Chance said: 'The core technology is founded on my background, looking at the microscopic structure of brains at autopsy for many years. You couldn't do that with a living patient and this is what we needed.' He said the technology could have a 'transformative' impact, bringing hope to 'millions of people who are seeking a non-invasive, precision diagnostic tool to reveal the truth about their brain health'. For now, the target patient market is those suffering mild cognitive decline, allowing professionals to differentiate between types of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases. Dr Chance said clinics might offer annual MOTs for those with concerns about memory problems. In time, and with the advent of more medicines to treat dementia, such advances could be rolled out to those in mid-life, he said. 'More than 20 per cent of those over 50 have Alzheimer's-type changes, small-scale changes that would be otherwise invisible. These breakthroughs open up a whole new way of monitoring brain health.'
Japan Times
14-05-2025
- Health
- Japan Times
Finally, a source of hope for Parkinson's disease sufferers
Two small studies published just recently in Nature offer early, but important validation that stem cell treatments for Parkinson's disease are viable. They also are a step toward a future where stem cells can be used not just to treat, but ideally to repair or prevent damage to the brain. Getting there will take incredible coordination and a continued commitment to understanding the drivers of neurodegenerative diseases; we can't fix what we don't know is broken. The treatments, one originally developed by a team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the other by researchers in Kyoto, Japan, are the culmination of decades of work to figure out how to turn stem cells into functional therapies for Parkinson's. (To be clear, these stem cells are designed in a lab and are not the same as the dubious therapies sold in stem cell clinics — none of which are FDA-approved.) Parkinson's disease is marked by a loss of neurons that make dopamine, a chemical messenger involved in movement and coordination. By the time someone shows signs of the disease such as a hand tremor or muscle stiffness, they have already lost anywhere from 60 to 80% of those nerve cells in the part of the brain that controls movement. Since the 1990s, researchers have imagined using stem cells to replace those lost neurons. Finally, it seems, they are figuring out the right set of cues to prompt stem cells to turn into dopamine-producing nerve cells. Moreover, these two experiments, which together tested separate therapies across 18 patients, offered hints that those cells, once implanted in the brain, might work as intended. The main goal of both studies was to ensure the stem cells were safe, well tolerated and feasible as a therapeutic. So far, so good. There was one small caveat: Because the treatments were made with donor stem cells rather than the patient's own cells, (an "off the shelf' approach that could make them easier to commercialize), participants initially had to take immunosuppressants to keep their bodies from rejecting the therapy, and some experienced mild to moderate side effects related to those drugs. Even better, the cells settled right into their environment and seemed to be functional even after people stopped taking immunosuppressants. Once implanted, a relatively straightforward procedure where millions of cells are carefully distributed in a part of the brain, the young nerve cells need to mature and form the right connections to their neighbors before they can start shipping out dopamine. That process takes many months, but the hope is that once that network is in place, these cells could be functional for many years, perhaps even for the rest of a Parkinson's patient's life. Using an imaging technique that lights up the endings of the nerve cells that make dopamine, the researchers showed that people continued to produce more of the neurotransmitter than before the transplant. And both research groups also found promising, but preliminary signs that the approach could improve motor symptoms and potentially quality of life for some patients. Of course, much more work is needed to prove these treatments work. Researchers must affirm their safety in larger studies and better understand whether these cells remain functional for the long term and can make a meaningful difference in patients' lives. To that end, BlueRock Therapeutics, a subsidiary of Bayer that licensed Memorial Sloan Kettering's stem cell technology related to Parkinson's, has begun a Phase 3 trial to test its treatment in roughly 100 people. Multiple other, earlier studies are under way to test other stem cell approaches in Parkinson's. Eventually, Parkinson's patients will have to decide if they even want these therapies. In the years it has taken researchers to get to this promising stage, better ways of delivering dopamine precursors to the brain or treat the movement symptoms of Parkinson's using deep brain stimulation have emerged. Regardless, this is an important advance, perhaps even more so for the promise it holds for other brain diseases. Proving that stem cells can be safely implanted in the brain is a step toward researchers' ultimate dream of designing therapies that go beyond symptoms and can actually fix the brain or even protect it from future damage. "This is a proof of concept that we can repair parts of the brain, to give it new life and function, which opens the door to other neurological disorders,' says Viviane Tabar, a stem cell biologist and neurosurgeon at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Designing those therapies is by now the easy part, says Lorenz Studer, director of MSK's Center for Stem Cell Biology. "Things are going to go much more quickly, from an engineering perspective.' But, Studer cautions, understanding the right way to apply those tools — in other words, knowing what support cell or nerve cell to deliver into the brain — continues to be a challenge. There's a huge amount of work ahead, but this proof of concept in Parkinson's should be motivation to keep pushing — both at the basic biology and at driving stem cell treatments forward. Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering biotech, health care and the pharmaceutical industry.
