In the next several decades the number of Alzheimer’s patients will continue to dramatically increase. Various teams of researchers worldwide are feverishly investigating precisely how the illness develops.
Inflammation as a New Therapeutic Approach For Alzheimer’s Disease
A team of scientists under the guidance of the University of Bonn and University of Massachusetts (USA) and with the participation of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases have discovered a new signaling pathway in mice which is involved in the development of chronic inflammation which causes nerve cells in the brain to malfunction and die off. The results are now being published in the renowned scientific journal “Nature”.
For the very first times, surgeons at Johns Hopkins have used a brain-implanted pacemaker device to try to slow memory loss in a patient suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s. So far there’s only one patient with a memory-saving zapper, but a second is on the way along with about 40 others over the course of the next year, with the help of several other research institutes. After implantation, the pacemakers zap a part of the brain called the fornix with up to 130 blasts of electricity per second, all without disturbing the brain’s owner.