Blog: The Brain Dialogues, filtered by tag: Alzheimer's Disease

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au At the age of just 61, a mother of three adoring children and seven beautiful grandchildren was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.  Her specialist physician was CHeBA Co-Director Professor Henry Brodaty.  A mere five years on and this loving Mum, Suellen Grellman,  is now living in a high care nursing home and requires assistance with everything that she does, including eating and drinking.  Understandably, Suellen’s daughter, Sarah Holmes, has found this journey tough.  “Watching my vibrant, confident, intelligent Mum deal and… Read More

This article was originally published in the The Conversation on 28 July 2016 Anyone who has ever visited a doctor’s office is familiar with the use of blood tests for the diagnosis of various diseases. Because blood comes in contact with all organs of the body, it carries markers of the health of these organs. It is an easily accessible body fluid, can be drawn repeatedly to follow the progress of a disease and, in most cases, blood tests are relatively inexpensive. It is therefore not surprising news that a possible blood test for dementia, in particular Alzheimer’s disease, gets much… Read More

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au Failure to use a standardised approach is limiting the effectiveness of research into whether microRNAs (miRNAs) can be used as a blood biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease.  Researchers at the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA) at UNSW Australia conducted a systematic review investigating research into miRNAs as potential biomarkers for early diagnosis and found that few studies assessed the same miRNAs and where they did, methodological differences between the studies made it hard to validate findings. The research, led by CHeBA PhD student Dr… Read More

ADELE HORIN Of all the things Australians fear, cancer is number one and dementia is number two. For me the order is reversed. I’ve had cancer (radiation, chemotherapy, lumpectomy). I’ve seen people die of cancer. It’s not easy or pretty. But I’ve also seen people die slowly of dementia – whether Alzheimer’s disease or vascular dementia, it doesn’t matter. Dementia holds a particular horror because it robs people of their intellect, their personality, their memory, their speech, their essential self. Cancer sufferers, on the other hand, remain recognisably themselves through the experience,… Read More

PROFESSOR PERMINDER SACHDEV, MD, PhD As a clinician, I regularly advise my patients with memory problems to keep mentally and socially active; “keep stimulating your brain” is the message. There could be a new twist to the notion of brain stimulation if some of the current research proves to be beneficial. The National Institute of Health in the United States recently funded a study of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for the treatment of Alzheimer’s. DBS is not a new technique, and it is regularly used to treat Parkinson’s disease and some other movement disorders. It involves the placement of… Read More