Alzheimers
In OneZero. More on Medium.
Infection with Toxoplasma gondii has unexpectedly protective effects in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease
If you live in the United States, there’s a decent chance you carry the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii. (Over 40 million Americans do.) You might know this protozoan as “Toxo” or the “crazy cat person” parasite, uncomfortably named for its potential connection to schizophrenia development and because of the completely unsupported idea that infection makes people love cats. Infection can be deadly for a very small subset of people, but Toxo’s unique ability to coexist with healthy hosts is shifting the way some scientists view parasitic infection.
While some are focused on fighting these invaders, others think we might have…
A new theory for Alzheimer’s disease is emerging, and at least one company is taking advantage of the new thinking with drugs in human trials
The mood among the more than 3,000 researchers who gathered in Lisbon, Portugal, at the end of March for the 14th International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases was downbeat. Just a few days earlier, Biogen, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech company, and Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai Co had jointly announced the shuttering of two major trials of their Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab. The announcement marked yet another failure in the decades-long effort to find a drug to halt the devastating course of the terminal, memory-robbing disease.
“There was a sort of pall over the meeting,” says Ron Petersen, director of the…
