Prevention

Here’s the surprising truth about brain health: there is a lot you can do.

If your brain was like a bicep, you may exercise it everyday, rewarded by the tone and definition you were developing with each passing workout. The central command center of the body, the brain is an organ that acts much like a muscle.

Amy Bleakley's research runs the gamut from adolescents to Alzheimer's disease, dental cavities to clinical trials, but she says the topics are not as different as they might appear.

Alzheimer’s disease is the only leading cause of death in the U.S. that is still on the rise and that does not have a current effective treatment or cure. The limited inclusion of Latinos and African Americans in research will only worsen the outlook, though the success of efforts bubbling up across the country could help us keep up with the disease.

A number of research projects are underway to develop a sensitive blood test that could help screen people for Alzheimer’s disease in a less invasive and costly way than current imaging and biomarker tests. NIA-supported researchers at Washington University in St. Louis reported an advance Aug. 1 in Neurology for their method of detecting amyloid protein in blood. The researchers are validating the method by showing an association between blood levels of amyloid and results from conventional biomarker tests for Alzheimer’s.

In a decision likely to stir scientific debate across the world, China's health regulator conditionally approved a new Alzheimer's drug for patients with mild-to-moderate forms of the neurodegenerative disease.