News

Having one hour a week of social interaction, combined with a just a small amount of personalized care, can improve the quality of life of people with dementia who live in care homes, according to a recent study in the United Kingdom. These findings came from the Improving Wellbeing and…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has revised clinical trial guidelines for Alzheimer’s therapies to help researchers come up with trial objectives that are better suited to patients in the early stages of the disease. European regulators have also revised their Alzheimer’s trial guidelines. The early-stage patients that the new…

Those caring for people with dementia often feel they don’t have a support system that can help them cope with their burden, a British study reports. The lack of support leads to stress, isolation and feelings of guilt, researchers said. One thing that could help, the University of Lincoln team suggested, was…

AbbVie and Voyager Therapeutics are teaming up to develop antibody-based gene therapies for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders. The collaboration includes gene therapies against the harmful tau protein in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. An antibody is a protein the immune system generates to fight harmful substances. Companies can…

Results from a pilot Phase 4 clinical trial evaluating the potential benefit of a known blood pressure and heart failure treatment, carvedilol, in Alzheimer’s disease showed the medicine had no effect in the episodic memory of patients. However, carvedilol was able to prevent the increase of beta-amyloid levels in cerebrospinal…

The University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine has joined a nationwide consortium of researchers looking for biological factors that could help predict blood-vessel-related health conditions, including dementia and Alzheimer’s. Six institutions besides USC are part of the initiative that the National Institutes of Health started two years ago. Scientists…

Texas A&M’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine  and Celltex Therapeutics are teaming up to evaluate whether inflammation-fighting sacs that stem cells release could be used to treat Alzheimer’s. The fluid-filled sacs, which scientists call vesicles, transport material inside a cell. But cells often release them, and when this happens, they…

Results from a Phase 2 clinical trial show that Nuplazid (pimavanserin) can safely treat, but possibly in the short-term only, symptoms of psychosis in Alzheimer’s patients, a study looking at data from that U.K. trial reports. An accompanying commentary, however, raised concerns about the clinical meaningfulness of these results and findings…

In another blow to hopes for an effective Alzheimer’s treatment, Merck announced that it is stopping its Phase 3 clinical study testing verubecestat (MK-8931) in patients with early stage disease. No specific reason was given, but lack of effectiveness in data compiled to date is a likely cause. The decision follows a…

The harmful tau protein associated with Alzheimer’s appears in one place in the brain, then spreads, rather than showing up in several places independently, new imaging techniques show. This finding suggests that preventing tau from spreading may be a good way of stopping the progression of the disease, a University…