Researchers Reverse Alzheimer’s Memory Loss (in Mice) | SciShow News

As many as 50 million people worldwide may live with Alzheimer's and similar forms of dementia, and while we still don't understand a lot about it, scientists may be one step closer to an effective treatment.

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[RangerRuby]

For someone who knows people with Alzheimers and dementia, this is a really awesome discovery and I hope this will get us one step closer to finding a cure!

[zygoth]

Honestly I would have been more excited if they had covered the recent study on gum disease and alzheimers. The company that ran that is doing stage 2 trials for a drug this year and their treatment might actually be medically relevant soon.

[kthfox]

Promising research is very good news. I watched my grandfather waste away over years as he went from vibrant jokester, fireman, and carpenter to an in home patient who couldnt feed himself.
I can't stand see that happen to anyone else, nor to their families.

[douglasmcneil]

I've worked in convalescent hospitals for more than 30 years. The impact of Alzheimers and dementia on resident and their families is one of the most profound losses anyone can face. This research is so terribly important. Thankyou for helping to make the public aware and hopeful that one day there will be a cure.

[elanianiyvwia]

I lost an aunt to this horrid disease!! It tears your heart out and rips into your soul!! They still look like uncle Jim or aunt sally. But they are vanishing as your heart breaks apart piece by piece as they disappear before your eyes!! It takes the person we love but leaves the body.... hope this works out!!

[CPUwhisperer]

In an article I read yesterday regarding the matter, they mentioned that the bacteria P. gingivalis, the bacteria involved in the development of gingivitis, was highly correlated with Alzheimer's. Is there a reason this, and the connection with gum disease, was not discussed in the video? Just curious. I know a lot of research goes into these videos, so I just want to make sure I didn't misunderstand something.

[shinybaldguy]

Thank you for saying, "cortices" and not "cortexes."

[rpsnider]

Yea this was a great find. My mother in law has it extremely badly, it's likely far too away to help her, but it gives me and my wife hope for the future if she unfortunately ends up suffering from it as well.

[starcrafsf]

While I’m glad to hear the information in this video. I’m also left saddened, as my father is currently suffering from dementia.

I constantly ask my self how I’m going to handle it years down the line when the disease takes it’s toll, I honestly have no answer to give myself as I find it hard to imagine, even right now watching it happen.

And it isn’t easy to see the man you respected the most in the world many days seem to have the cognitive capabilities of a child, and incapable most of the time to clearly articulate sentences, and to watch it happen. And then to see him break down and cry when he knows that he’s slowly and literally loosing his mind, this is the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to watch.

[SyvannaS]

I wish alziemers and dementia never existed. Both my grandparents have it and they raised me my whole life. It’s hard watching basically your parents waste in front of you. I wish I could go back in time and see them healthy once more.

[joshuah.]

Scientist: "So, do you remember anything?"


Mouse: *squeaks*


Scientist: "Boys, we did it"

[MrLeafeater]

Now I gotta reread "Flowers for Algernon". Glad this research is making progress, as I have Alzheimers waiting for me in my own future.

[celtgunn]

My Grandfather passed away due to all of the horrific complications of Alzheimer's Disease. When he passed away, he weighed about 90 lbs. Nothing but skin & bones. Alzheimer's is a monster. He once was a robust retired Navel man of 250+lbs, very active sailor, gem cutter. Life of the party. It tore our family apart when he died. 😪

[mando_gra]

you know, scishow... sometimes i wish i had something in my head eating away all memory of your videos, just so i can rewatch them all from the start and discover them anew.
thanks guys.

[sinnestra]

This gives me hope. I've lost a lot of family to Alzheimer's and am starting to see the signs in even more as the years pass. It is a terrifying thing to loose your mind and who you are. It's one of my biggest fears as I age. And it's hard for everyone around the person with Alzheimer's too. If I have the chance to save myself and everyone around me from going through the hardships that come with this disease, I'm going to take it.

[icostaticrebound]

My grandmother died as a result of Alzheimer's disease and it is thought to be hereditary in my family. Hopefully this development will be complete by the time my mother is of retirement age :)

[camillekapoor]

Please do one for Huntington’s Disease and gene silencing / editing ! Your video was so informative. :)

[esecallum]

2. Methods
2.1. Subjects

Five mild-to-moderate AD patients and one mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patient were recruited to the study. All subjects received their diagnoses from Dementia Clinics in Denmark in accordance with ICD-10 AD and Petersen MCI criteria [9]. All subjects were in treatment with donepezil.

Further inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) age: 50-85 years; (2) ≥7 years of education or working history. Exclusion criteria were as follows: (1) past history of concussive head injury or stroke; (2) previous history of epilepsy or current epilepsy; (3) current migraine; (4) contraindications to MRI; (5) significant systemic or psychiatric diseases; (6) other neurodegenerative disease; (7) use of medications/treatments which could influence neuropsychological testing, including electroconvulsive therapy; (8) participation in other clinical trials within 30 days of study entry.
2.2. Light Stimulus

We utilized a Light Emitting Diode (LED) 40 Hz light bulb (12.5 ms light on, 12.5 ms light off). The sharp on-off square-wave frequency flickering pattern was verified with an oscilloscope (Supplementary Figure 1A). Light flicker stimulation was tested one meter from a healthy 42-year-old male volunteer fitted with an EEG electrode montage (SOMNOMedics, Randersacker, Germany). A photic driving response was confirmed, i.e., presence of 40 Hz oscillations in frontal and occipital leads (Supplementary Figure 1B). Light stimulation was performed with the patients seated in their own home in the dark. The background illumination was measured to be 0.5-0.6 LUX at the locations where patients received light stimulation. Thus, maximal light-dark contrast was ensured for the light flicker stimulation. The light bulbs’ illumination was measured before and after light therapy using a ISO-TECH ILM 1335 (ISO-TECH, Midrand, South Africa) and was found to be stable with no significant loss of efficiency, and mean intensity measurements of the light sources were pretreatment Lux =1815 ± 94.6 and posttreatment Lux= 1737 ± 68.3.

Caregivers were instructed to ensure that patients received a continuous 60-minute 40 Hz light stimulation twice daily (1 hour morning, 1 hour evening) for 10 consecutive days. No other light sources were allowed during treatment (computer, tablet, mobile phone, television, etc.) but the patients were allowed to read or do other manual chores at a distance of 0.5-1 meter from the LED light source. The patients were also asked to look directly into the light source for a minimum of 5 minutes during every session. Patients and caregivers were provided with a stopwatch and instructed to record the total time duration of each light session and the time spent looking directly at the light source. Postintervention PiB scans were for all subjects performed the day following the final intervention day.
2.3. Imaging

Isometric 1 mm T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed with a Skyra 3T system (Siemens, Erlangen, Germany).

11C-PiB PET was performed with a High Resolution Research Tomograph (ECAT HRRT, CTI/Siemens, Knoxville, TN) according to a previously published scan protocol [1]. The pretreatment scans were performed at different time before treatment start, while the posttreatment scans all were performed on the day following the end of the light-therapy, i.e., on day 11. A mean dose of 407 ± 13.8 MBq (for poststimulation scans) and 424 ± 15.3 MBq (for the prestimulation scans) 11C-PiB was injected, and list-mode PET was acquired for 40-90 minutes postinjection. Data was subsequently rebinned into five frames of 10 min each.
2.4. Image Analysis

The PNEURO toolbox from PMOD version 3.6 (PMOD, Zürich, Switzerland) was used for image processing and analysis. MRI volumes were segmented into grey matter (GM), white matter (WM), and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). GM masks were convolved with a probabilistic atlas [10] to individualize VOIs to individual GM. Volumes defining primary visual cortex and precuneus were manually added to the atlas. Mean 50-90 min PiB images were coregistered to individual anatomical MRI, and the transformation matrices from the individual’s native MRI space to MNI space were applied to the PET images. PiB SUVR images were generated by dividing each voxel value in the averaged PiB images by the mean PiB uptake in the individual’s cerebellar GM VOI [11]. PiB SUVR values were sampled from 5 VOIs: primary visual cortex, visual association cortex, lateral parietal, precuneus, and posterior cingulate cortices. To minimize spill-in/spill-out, no smoothing was applied prior to extraction of PiB SUVR values from the VOIs. Correct placement of each VOI in each subject was visually confirmed on both MRI and PET in atlas space.
2.5. Statistical Analysis

Data is presented as mean ± standard deviation (SD). Data were analysed using STATA version 14.2 (StataCorp LP, Texas, USA). Paired t-tests were used to test pre-/postchanges in PiB SUVRs with a p<0.05 threshold for statistical significance.

We assumed a maximal test-retest coefficient-of-variance of cortical PiB uptake of 12 % [12, 13]. A power calculation with alpha=0.05 showed that we would be able to detect a 20% decline in PIB retention with 90% power.
3. Results

Demographic, clinical, and individual regional SUVR data are presented in Table 1. Median duration from the baseline PET scan to the poststimulation scan was 89 days (range: 18-283), while all poststimulation scans were performed one day after end stimulation. The average time duration of the light therapy sessions was 61.5 ± 4.8 minutes per session, during which the patients looked directly at the light source for 39.3 ± 21.5 minutes per session (range: 10-65 minutes).

[TheMagicalPinata]

It's weird to see the stuff I work on (epigenetics in Alzheimer's) in a YouTube video. You did a good job explaining it!

[isgwvql]

I want to say thank you to the whole SciShow team. You are making the world a better place!