A tangled tale Small advances are making Alzheimer's a bit less
mysterious THE past few months have not been good for
Alzheimer's research. Trials of two drugs and one vaccine have
flopped. This was the dour background to the International
Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, held in Chicago this week.
The conference did, however, bring some encouraging news. John
Ronald, of the University of Western Ontario, and his colleagues
have managed to identify the brain plaques associated with the
disease using magnetic resonance imaging. Previously,
Alzheimer's could be distinguished with certainty from other
dementias only by post-mortem examination. The Cure Alzheimer's
Fund, a charity, also had an important finding. It announced
that its mapping of the disease's genetic basis has found 70
genes that may be involved, far more than expected. The imaging
advance should make it easier to identify people with the
disease, and thus start treatment early, while the genetic one
may help researchers seeking to develop such