Like many age-related conditions, Alzheimer's disease results from an excess in processes of degeneration that are common to all of us. We all have ?-amyloid building up in our brains, and we are all being damaged by it (or by the underlying causes that lead to it) - just to a lesser extent. A practical therapy for Alzheimer's that works by removing causes of aggregate buildup is something that everyone would benefit from: "Several lines of evidence suggest that pathologic changes underlying Alzheimer disease (AD) begin years prior to the clinical expression of the disease, underscoring the need for studies of cognitively healthy adults to capture these early changes. The overall goal of the current study was to map the cortical distribution of ?-amyloid (A?) in a healthy adult lifespan sample (aged 30-89), and to assess the relationship between elevated amyloid and cognitive performance across multiple domains. ... A? deposition is distributed differentially across the cortex and progresses at varying rates with age across cortical brain regions. A subset of cognitively normal adults aged 60 and over show markedly elevated deposition, and also had a higher rate of APOE ?4 (38%) than nonelevated adults (19%). A? burden was linked to poorer cognitive performance on measures of processing speed, working memory, and reasoning. ... Even in a highly selected lifespan sample of adults, A? deposition is apparent in some adults and is influenced by APOE status. Greater amyloid burden was related to deleterious effects on cognition, suggesting that subtle cognitive changes accrue as amyloid progresses."

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22302550

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm