Rapamycin recently showed promise as a potential treatment for Alzheimer's disease, and here more researchers are working on that: "A few weeks after a report that rapamycin, a drug that extends lifespan in mice and that is currently used in transplant patients, curbed the effects of Alzheimer's disease in mice, a second group is announcing similar results in an entirely different mouse model of early Alzheimer's. ... The second report [showed] that administration of rapamycin improved learning and memory in a strain of mice engineered to develop Alzheimer's. The improvements in learning and memory were detected in a water maze activity test that is designed to measure learning and spatial memory. The improvements in learning and memory correlated with lower damage in brain tissue. ... Strikingly, the Alzheimer's mice treated with rapamycin displayed improved performance on the maze, even reaching levels that were indistinguishable from their normal littermates. Levels of amyloid-beta-42 were also reduced in these mice after treatment, and we are seeing preserved numbers of synaptic elements in the brain areas of Alzheimer's disease mice that are ravaged by the disease process."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/uoth-adt040110.php

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