Australian researchers have come up with a non-invasive ultrasound technology that clears the brain of neurotoxic amyloid plaques - structures that are responsible for memory loss and a decline in cognitive function in Alzheimer’s patients.

If a person has Alzheimer’s disease, it’s usually the result of a build-up of two types of lesions - amyloid plaques, and neurofibrillary tangles. Amyloid plaques sit between the neurons and end up as dense clusters of beta-amyloid molecules, a sticky type of protein that clumps together and forms plaques.

Neurofibrillary tangles are found inside the neurons of the brain, and they’re caused by defective tau proteins that clump up into a thick, insoluble mass. This causes tiny filaments called microtubules to get all twisted, which disrupts the transportation of essential materials such as nutrients and organelles along them, just like when you twist up the vacuum cleaner tube.

As we don’t have any kind of vaccine or preventative measure for Alzheimer’s - a disease that affects 343,000 people in Australia, and 50 million worldwide - it’s been a race to figure out how best to treat it, starting with how to clear the build-up of defective beta-amyloid and tau proteins from a patient’s brain. Now a team from the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at the University of Queensland have come up with a pretty promising solution for removing the former.

Publishing in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes the technique as using a particular type of ultrasound called a focused therapeutic ultrasound, which non-invasively beams sound waves into the brain tissue. By oscillating super-fast, these sound waves are able to gently open up the blood-brain barrier, which is a layer that protects the brain against bacteria, and stimulate the brain’s microglial cells to activate. Microglila cells are basically waste-removal cells, so they’re able to clear out the toxic beta-amyloid clumps that are responsible for the worst symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

The team reports fully restoring the memory function of 75 percent of the mice they tested it on, with zero damage to the surrounding brain tissue. They found that the treated mice displayed improved performance in three memory tasks - a maze, a test to get them to recognise new objects, and one to get them to remember the places they should avoid.

"We’re extremely excited by this innovation of treating Alzheimer’s without using drug therapeutics," one of the team, Jürgen Götz, said in a press release. "The word ‘breakthrough’ is often misused, but in this case I think this really does fundamentally change our understanding of how to treat this disease, and I foresee a great future for this approach."

The team says they’re planning on starting trials with higher animal models, such as sheep, and hope to get their human trials underway in 2017.

You can hear an ABC radio interview with the team here. (interesting interview about rejuvenating aging brains. )







http://www.sciencealert.com/new-alz...memory-function

Speaking only for myself, Alzheimer's is the biggest fear attached to growing older. This article is great news! We can only hope that it doesn't get swept under the rug because the pharmaceutical companies can't make the treatment into a new drug.

This sounds very hopeful.

Maybe no drug possibilities (although somebody might use this as evidence that a drug with a similar effect would work). But there's money to be made by the procedure itself, if it helps with human Alzheimer's, that should help.

In the radio interview, they discuss how plasma from young animals can increase cognition in the old and vice versa. They suspect some sort of signaling molecule. There could be a drug made to mimic that but who knows what side-effects it'd have.

It'd be interesting to see if the ultrasound method gets as far as human trials and who'd be funding them.

Philips, Samsung, GE and others manufacture ultrasound devices. Hmm.

I don't think it'd be profitable enough for them though. The technology already exists and is in use in most hospitals and clinics. They could devise something unique, an adapter for brain ultrasounds for instance. Even if they devised a completely new ultrasound device specifically for this use, it'd be a one-time sale that should last years and treat thousands of patients. It's different from a drug, which is a consumable and more profitable product.

Me too. I'm caring for my mom who has dementia right now. When my time comes, there won't be anyone to take care of me. Hoping a ketogenic diet will save me.

If regular medicine doesn't adopt it, you can bet alternative practitioners will.