How Close are we to Curing Alzheimer's?

that was my friend Steve? I mean, the guy was wearing a hat, he had on glasses, then he had longer hair than he might have weighed five or six more pounds, Like, how did you know that was Steve? I know, it was so impressive, but also so creepy. I felt the same way. I kind of had mixed

emotions about it. But you know, as much as the world of artificial intelligence can sometimes weird us out and leave us feeling a little bit violated, even you know, the more I've read about its potential applications in the world of medicine, the more I'm actually fascinated, you know, by what it might be capable of in the decades ahead.

So how do you mean exactly, Well, I've been reading some about how so many conditions and genetic ones in particular, have what some in the medical field would call a certain face, and that is a set of similar features that might indicate whether someone might have a certain genetic syndrome. Now, the advantage of technology is obviously that these machines can process so many millions of pieces of data at one time, and they'd be looking for these common features, even very

subtle ones. So some of those same programmers who were helping places like Facebook, they're getting involved to help with the diagnosis of Alzheimer's, something that's often incredibly difficult to diagnose before significant damage has been done in the brain, and they're often looking for these subtle speech delays or slight hiccups as you might describe them, that a doctor

might not be able to see it first. And it's still very early, but of course we all hope this leads to better diagnosis and better treatment, and the progress to date does give us some real hope. I feel like most of us have been affected by Alzheimer's in some way, knowing a loved one who's suffered from it.

I know both of us have. So you know, today we wanted to talk a little bit about that, Like what we know about Alzheimer's, what kind of progress we're making and fighting it, and who seems to be doing the best job of caring for those with Alzheimer's. So let's get started, right hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend man guest shot Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass, hunched over

his brand new copy of Mandarin for Dummies. It's been a while since I've seen a dummies book, but anyway, that that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil, and of course he's on theme as usual. You know, I was reading just this week about how learning a new language

can help stave off Alzheimer's in some cases. And this was from a study out of York University in Toronto where they actually examined over a hundred long time bilingual Alzheimer's patients along with over a hundred monolingual patients, and it turned out that on average, the bilingual patients have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's about four years later than the

monolingual patients. So the idea is that because learning a second language gives the brains such a strong workout, it can actually help keep the full effects of the disease at bay longer, which is really interesting. But you know, it's honestly sometimes tough to say for certain, because they're all kinds of genetic and environmental factors that can increase or decrease a person's chances of contracting Alzheimer's, and we'll

be talking about a few of those later on. But ultimately, no one is immune to the disease, and the greatest risk factor associated with it, of course, is is just age itself. In fact, studies have clearly shown that the number of people with Alzheimer's disease increases with age, so much so that roughly one in five people now suffer

from it by the age of eight five. And I know all of this is upsetting to think about, and people who have Alzheimer's disease and their family are already dealing with it on a daily basis, and those of us who have been lucky enough not to have to face it in some big way would probably rather focus on just about anything else. But the truth is this is something everybody needs to stay informed about, particularly if

you plan to live past the age of sixty. Another good news is that scientists are already hard at work on new research and new treatments, and that's what we'll be focused on today. You know, all those promising approaches to Alzheimer's disease that could hopefully lead to earlier detection and improve symptom management and hopefully one day of course secure that's right, But before we get to the more hopeful side of the topic, we should probably do a

quick crash course on what the disease is exactly. So for starters, Alzheimer's disease is a chronic, progressive neurodegenerative disease, which means it's a form of dementia that leads to severe cognitive loss and eventual death. And while there are several different kinds of dementia, Alzheimer's is the most common, accounting for somewhere between sixty eight percent of all dementia cases.

So really, dementia is something of an epidemic at this point, I would think, because you know, some of the stats I found all researching, we're pretty jaw dropping. Apparently, Alzheimer's is now the sixth leading cause of death in the US and the seventh worldwide. And that really wasn't the case even fifty years ago. Yeah, So Alzheimer's was formally recognized as an epidemic back in the seventies, and sadly

that designation still stands today. In fact, that the world has a larger aging population than ever before, which inevitably means that the number of people who developed the disease

is only set to grow. For example, this organization called Alzheimer's Disease International, they estimated that about five million people in the US and nearly fifty million people worldwide currently suffer from dimension one form or another, but by twenty fifty the number is projected actually to reach one hundred thirty one million. Wow. So it's obvious in light of that why they such a big push to find a

cure as soon as possible. But you know, I'm curious how long have we known about the problem, Like, is Alzheimer's something we've been trying to get a grip on

for centuries or this a relatively new threat. Well, dementia as a broad concept is popped up in medical text going all the way back to ancient Greece, but the first case study for Alzheimer's in particular was in nineteen o one, and that's when this German neuropathologist named A. Louis Alzheimer, you know who the disease is named after, began treating a woman at an asylum in Frankfurt, and the fifty one year old patients seemed to suffer from

some kind of psychosis. In addition to rapid memory loss, she reported I guess uh, strange feelings of jealousy towards her husband. She also had these odd behaviors, like she'd dragged furniture to and fro She'd hied uh. Sometimes she'd think people were out to kill her, so then she would scream out loudly. It was pretty sad, and so was Dr Alzheimer able to help her in anyway? No,

not really. But when the patient died five years later, Alzheimer was able to dissect or brain, and his findings formed the basis for the first formal description of pre senile dementia. So what did he find when he looked? So? Today we know that the main effects of Alzheimer's, like memory laws, decreased thinking ability, Personality changes like these are all the result of dyeing brain cells and the atrophy

of certain key regions of the brain. And the reason these brain cells start to die off is because something has disrupted the communication between the neurons and the brain. So Alzheimer's biggest contribution was really identifying what that something was, or at least most likely what it is, because when he dissected that patient's brain and examined it under a microscope, he identified these tiny tangles and plaques dotting the gray tissues. And and these are the masses that that are some

kind of protein build up, right, yeah, there are. There are these two types of proteins at work. It's the amyloid and the tao. And while we don't know what prompts the accumulation of these proteins are how exactly they interact, their presence is usually a telltale sign of Alzheimer's. So the amaloid is recognizable because it bunches together into sticky clumps through these beta amaloid plaques. And the tow is easy to spot because it accumulates as tangles of these

watered up protein strands. You know, even before we started doing our research for today's episode, I'd always heard that one of the biggest obstacles for treating Alzheimer's is that it's, you know, notoriously difficult to diagnose. By the time the symptoms manifest enough to be caught, much of that damage has already been done. But why is that, like, if

these plaques and tangles are so noticeable. Yeah, it's a good question, and the answer is that we actually haven't found a reliable or accurate way to measure these protein build ups, especially in living patients. So more than a hundred years after that initial case in Germany, there's still no definitive way to diagnose Alzheimer's without dissecting the brain post mortem to look for these hallmark plaques and tangles.

And in recent years, some postmortems have given a reason to question whether the presence of these build ups is really telling the whole story anyway. Oh, so what do you mean by that? Well, there have actually been some cases where patients who were said to have Alzheimer's were revealed to not have plaques and tangles in their brains. And maybe even weirder, there are also cases where post mortem exams show massive build ups in the brains of

people who had excellent memories. So while these plaques and these tangles appear to have some part in the onset of Alzheimer's, it isn't true in all cases, and as a result, a growing number of researchers are starting to think that chronic inflammation might actually play the larger role in the disease than they initially thought. So here's how Scientific American broke down the new hypothesis and article from

last November. In the brain tissue damaging long term inflammation can also be caused by a build up of cells known as microglia. In a healthy brain, these cells engulf and destroy waste and toxins, but in Alzheimer's patients, the microglia failed to clear away this debris, which can include toxic tow tangles or amyloid plaques. The body then activates more microglia to try to clear the waste, but this

in turn causes inflammation. Long term or chronic inflammation is particularly damaging to brain cells and ultimately leads to brain cell death. Okay, so in this case, the inflammation, which could be worsened by the plaques and the tangles would would actually be the real culprit behind the dying brain cell.

So how would just been thinking about this? How would that impact the search for for treatments, though, I mean, from everything I've read, it seems like most researchers have been focusing on the other ways to prevent or destroy these protein build ups. So I mean, I hate to ask this, but have we been heading in the wrong direction this whole time? Well it's too early to say for sure, but I really hope not. It would be devastating to see such a colossal amount of effort and

money lead to a dead end. I mean, we hear about new promising treatments all the time, but all too many of them disappear from headlines a few months later because they were later proven ineffective during trials. And in fact, at this point, none of the hot twenty three experimental Alzheimer's drugs developed between two thousand and fourteen have made

it past the later stages of clinical testing. And that's obviously a concern for all sorts of reasons, you know, not the least of which is just how much it costs to develop even one new form of treatment. For example, that there was this two thousand sixteen study from the Journal of Health Economics, and it found the average research and development cost for a new medicine are about two

point six billion dollars. Good lord, it's hard to even wrap your head around that kind of money for something like that. But you know the truth is that, you know, we as a country still aren't spending as much on

Alzheimer's researches we likely should be. I mean, stimulate spending for Alzheimer's research was increased to around I think it was around one point eight billion dollars this year, and that does get it pretty close to that two billion dollar mark that the Alzheimer's Association has has long been saying that researchers needed in order to treat the disease effectively. But this funding has to be every year, so there's no guarantee that that upper trend will continue long term.

And not to mention that's just funding for new research, I mean that the actual cost of health care for dementia already exceeds two hundred billion dollars each year in the US. Yeah. But despite the uncertainties that still surround Alzheimer's, like all that plaques and tangles, research we've been spending so much money on will still be super useful no matter what. And that's partly because many researchers are now

pushing for a more personalized approach to Alzheimer's treatment. It's similar to the way we're dealing with cancer, like there's no one treatment that's effective for every kind of cancer, or even for every case of the same kind, and it's the same way with Alzheimer's. So the idea you had the new approach is to use multiple drugs to target the many different changes in the brain that can

occur with Alzheimer's. Okay, I see. So for instance, you might start a patient off with one drug if you're trying to reduce that build up of amyloid plaques or something like that, and then you might switch to another if inflammation is the bigger issue, or or change it

up if it's different for another patient exactly. So, Alzheimer's is obviously this complex disease and it doesn't manifest the same across the board, so it's helpful to have as many tools at our disposal as possible to treat it, and that way we can mix and match medications to create treatment plants tailor made for each patient's pelecular profile. Al Right, well, that does sound like a more promising

approaches as well. As a nice reminder that it's worth tackling this problem from as many different angles as we can. I mean, you never know which one might lead to that game changing solution that we're always looking for. Absolutely, And in the meantime, there's still some effective ways to reduce your chances of contracting Alzheimer's, and even a few new ideas for how to detect and diagnose Alzheimer's without

having to wait for a postmortem. Yeah, well, I definitely want to talk about those, but before we do, let's take a quick break. You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about the most promising efforts to treat Alzheimer's disease. All right, mango, So we talked about how, for decades now, the prevailing theory has been that Alzheimer's is caused by these cell killing protein build ups in the brain. And you noted how chronic inflammation is also

thought to have some role in that degeneration. And what strikes me about all this is it it seems like we know where the accumulations and inflammation may come from, but we don't really know why they occur. Yeah, that's true, but but a person's genetics do provided least some clues as to what's going on. For for example, we know that the trigger for most cases of Alzheimer's is a single mutated gene and it's on one of our chromosomes.

Then remember that we all have two copies of every gene, one from each of our parents, so potentially someone could have two copies of this mutated gene. Al right, So how big a factor is this mutation on whether a person develops Alzheimer's or not? I mean, it really depends on how many copies of the muta genes someone has.

So if a person has one copy, then there's up to chance of them developing the disease, And if they have two copies, then the likelihood jumps to as high as eight seven m alright, And so how common is it to have one or two of these genes? So apparently about of the population has one copy, but it's only two percent that have two copies. And testing for the genes is actually something you can do through something like twenty three and ME or one of those other

personal genetics tests. You know, though, you know, whether you want to stress yourself out with something like that is another question entirely. Yeah, I can see. I'm you know, a lot of people might feel like that level of self knowledge is is something they're not quite prepared to handle, and especially considering that many researchers say there's more to the disease than just genetics. For example, I was reading how some scientists think that the true causes of Alzheimer's

can be traced back to more environmental factors. That includes everything from your diet to how many times you've been you know, hitting the head in your lifetime too. Of course, yes,

you know how many languages you speak? Yeah, definitely, so that language one is actually rooted in the fact that people who stay mentally active experienced less cognitive decline as they age, and amazingly, that remains the case even for people whose brains were later found to be riddled with familiar signs of Alzheimer's, like those plaques or tangles we've

been talking about. So even when the disease is already set in, elderly patients who make it a habit to read or write or play thinking games like chess can sometimes stave off its symptoms for a lot longer. In fact, one two thirteen study found that people who didn't routinely exercise, their brains experienced cognitive decline full forty eight percent faster than those dident Yeah, that's pretty pretty good endorsement for reading.

But you know, you know, for those times when your brain just needs a break or you know, it does look like there's some other ways, and and one of these that many people might find of interest is by knocking back a couple of of drinks. Or at least that's the word from a study that came out earlier this year in Scientific Reports. Honestly, that kind of sounds like a made up name for a dun over like this. This was in Scientific Reports, So I should have a

drink a lot, that's right. But the researchers found that drinking just two glasses of wine daily is enough to net you a positive effect, which it works due to the way the alcohol interacts with the brain. So apparently the wine enhances the brain's ability to remove those damaging toxins that build up in the brain, which of course includes those TAO and beta amyloid proteins that we've been

talking about. The brain typically does this by pumping in some cerebral fluid to flush away those troublesome plaques and tangles. But there's something about alcohol that gets the old cerebral fluid flowing more efficiently. And in case you're not a wine drinker, there is some evidence that other forms of alcohol work too. For instance, there was another study from a couple of years ago that found that beer drinkers

tend to have fewer ammoloid build ups than non beer drinkers. Now, as always, I do need to pause here and say the key part here is moderation. Excessive alcohol consumption is obviously not a good thing for anybody. Yeah, I mean, it's really wild to lay out all the environmental factors potentially connected with Alzheimer's, Like I saw this one report in the Journal of Neuroscience about how even something like sleeping on your side can help delay the development of

both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. And apparently it goes back to the fluid flush routine our brains used to clear out waste. Like, it turns out the fluid flows most effectively when we're asleep and on our sides. All right, so it sounds like we've got the solution here. We just need to do some Sudoku puzzles all day long. Line on our side and then drink ourselves into a wine comas that

that's the solution here, Yeah, and pick up cantonese. I think it's not the part of right, right, Okay, that's right. I forgot, But I mean, you know it's it's there's no surefire way to hold back Alzheimer's either, you know that. That's the thing about all these environmental risks we're talking about, like they can only suggest probable connections between things that have already happened. Like I've even seen studies that link drinking soda, both regular and diet, to the onset of Alzheimer's.

And and while there might be a correlation between getting Alzheimer's and drinking soda, that doesn't mean that one necessarily caused the other to happen. Well, that's a good point, And I mean these kinds of lifestyle considerations can be kind of reassuring for us to think about. But the research I do find most exciting is this stuff aimed at finding new detection methods for Alzheimer's. After all, it's two thousand and eighteen, and it feels like we need

a better system than having to dissect these brains post mortem. Yeah, I agree, and that's why I was excited when I first found out that we actually do have tests that can identify those gene mutations I mentioned earlier, the ones that make a person more likely to develop Alzheimer's. But as it turns out, many people who develop Alzheimer's don't actually carry that genetic marker. Well, many who do never

end up exhibiting Alzhemer's symptoms. Well, so this is kind of like the plaques and tangles then, right, like that, they're reliable markers that maybe point the way to Alzheimer's, except for all of these cases where for some reason they don't, yeah, exactly, And and that means that even genetic testing can't provide any real degree of certainty one way or another. And that's what makes it all so confusing, Like, even if you don't have the genetic markers, you could

still develop the disease. Well, thankfully, some researchers have begun branching out from genetic and environmental factors and they're concentrating

on these so called biomarkers instead. Now, the idea here is that the body exhibits tell tale biological signs of Alzheimer's that we don't necessarily have to look at the brain to find so that we can look for these clues in all kinds of places that might be in the blood or in the cerebro spinal fluid we mentioned earlier, or even in the eyes of all places, And honestly, that last one is probably my favorite because all it involves is administering these fancy eye drops, and that's just

so much less obtrusive than digging around in somebody's brain. Yeah, I mean that that obviously sounds way better there to me, But walk me through what makes these eye drops so fancy. Well, even though we have things like pets cans to help us take a closer look at living brains, it can still be incredibly tough to identify those beta em aloid build ups that often point to Alzheimer's. And that's largely because the betas are just one of many kinds of ammolloids,

and they're all kinds of hard to tell apart. Plus, there are many different neurological disorders that are linked to specific ammolloids, So if you can't tell which protein you're looking at, then you really can't determine which disorder it's pointing to. I see, So how did the eye drops help with that? All right? Well, this is where things

get really cool. So you know how the eyes are closely connected to the brain, right, Well, the connection is so close that amyloids actually accumulate in our eyes too, not just the brains. So the researchers are hoping that by adding these fluorescent markers to eye drops, they'll be able to light up the ammoloids in the eyes and different colors, and of course each color would correspond to a different ammoloid and bike stay chin from that to

the disorder it's associated with. So in theory, you could have a doctor diagnosing a patient's condition just by looking them in the eye. Isn't that incredible? Yeah, it really is. And it actually reminds me of this other new Alzheimer's

tests I've read about. It's called the Opposite or the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test, and it's basically one of those scratch and sniff cards with like forty different odors on it, which is really clever because you know, we've known for a while now that people with neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's, often lose some or all of their sense of smell. So if a patient nails the opposite, you pretty much know that they're not going to have Alzheimer's,

at least for the next few years. And I know there are plenty of other reasons why people lose their ability to smell, So you know, it's not like it's just this comprehensive test for Alzheimer's or anything. But as Kate Horowitz from Mental Fauce puts it, the results are instantaneous and at it's a far cheaper starting point than

other brain scans. Huh, well, that's that's true. But all well, we've talked about ways to potentially delay the onset of Alzheimer's, as well as some new ideas for how to detect and even diagnose it earlier. So now why don't we take a look at a few of them may maybe more out of the box approaches to Alzheimer's treatment and how they hope to make a difference in the lives of those with Alzheimer's. That sounds great, but first let's take another quick break. Okay, well, so what kinds of

unorthodox approaches to Alzheimer's treatments are you excited about? All right, so I came across two rest examples that really stood out to me, and they're pretty different because one highlights the power of the individual in this ongoing fight, and one showcases what a motivated community can give back to those who are suffering from Alzheimer's. So I'll start with the first one, which is this may a new app and it's called Timeless and it's being developed by a

fourteen year old girl named Emma Yang. And yes, you heard that right. Emma is indeed a teenage program prodigy. According to an article in Fast Company, Emma code of the app herself and the hope that it will one day help her grandmother, who has Alzheimer's, to remember her loved ones. I mean, first off, that is so inspiring and also heartbreaking, but it also sounds like a really

great concept. So how does it work well. The idea is to use facial recognition as a way to remind the user who a certain person is and also what their relationship is to them. So once the Timeless app is loaded up with all of this information and Alzheimer's patient can refer to it anytime they have trouble recognizing someone's face, and all they have to do is take a quick photo of the person, and the app will

pull up all of their information. So the hope is that once a patient refers to the same entries enough times, they'll start to better retain that information. And that's not the only thing it does either, So Emma has also programmed the app to provide appointment reminders and even help users recognize when they might be repeating a task that

they've already completed. So, for instance, if a patient calls a friend for a second time because they, you know, forgot about the first call they made, the app will notify them that this is the second call to that number in that short period of time. So while this isn't something that would be useful in the later stages of Alzheimer's, it could be a way to help prolong those family interactions in the meantime. I mean that that is really clever. I'm guessing the app hasn't hit the

market though yet. Right now, m is still working on securing all the funding that she needs to get it out the door, but it sounds like the plan is to release it within the next couple of years. Well, I mean, I'm obviously rooting for her, but I'm curious, like, what's the more community driven program that caught your eye. So this one's part of a cultural program that was started a couple of years ago by a handful of museums that are in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and it's called

Spark and it works in partnership with Alzheimer's Association. Is a way to help stimulate patients memories. So according to Smithsonian, the program's main goal is to quote use artwork and other sensory input to help stimulate long term memory retention among patrons. And so some of these tours even have the patients interact with sensory items along the way you think about like scented candles or a piece of textured cloth, and the ideas that all of this can help spark

their memories. So, for example, if a group of patients was looking at a sculpture while a scented candle was burning, and then you lit that same candle a few hours later and ask the patients about the sculpture, the scent might help them recall more about that piece and their perceptions of it, and you know, they would have a better memory of it than without that sensory input. I mean,

that's really awesome. So do you have any sense of like how many museums offer programs like this, Well, so far, I think there are fourteen of them that are part of the Spark program and they hold art tours and painting classes, as even dances, and these are all for Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers. But these programs are actually modeled after a similar initiative that was at MoMA and

that started a little over a decade ago. And because of the success of these kinds of programs, you've got museums all over the US that have started investing in their own ways, and all of these are efforts to help them, you know, those with memory laws re engage

with art. That is such a great idea. And and since we're talking about ingenious, community driven Alzheimer's programs, I do want to talk just a little bit about this government funded nursing care company outside of Amsterdam that runs what it refers to as a dementia village. So I'm sure you've heard about this, but it's an entire model town known as hoke Awake, and there are more than a hundred fifty resident patients living together in groups there.

It opened in two thousand nine as a way to combat the social isolation and lack of activity that people with dementia often deal with, and instead of feeling cooped up with nothing to do, patients are encouraged to carry out everyday activities in this controlled environment. And it's built like a functioning tiny town, so they can go grocery shopping, they can visit the hair salon, catch a movie at the theater, or even grab a cup of coffee at

the cafe. All of these storefronts are staffed by caretakers, and they also populated the town and help look out for patients safety. It's really incredible. Yeah, and I love this concept and you're thinking about it. It gives these Alzheimer's patients a chance to socialize more and and even regain some of that independence that they had before. And imagine it must have such a big impact on their

quality of life overall. It actually reminds me a lot of that town in Belgium where there's like this seven hundred year old tradition of residents taking in patients with neurological disease or mental illnesses. So the towns people just kind of adopt these patients. Into their families and look after them like their own And it's that same kind of all for one mentality that I get from that,

you know, that hoc Awake approach. Yeah. Plus this prop town set up in general is just kind of awesome, right, Like it's like Truman Show, but without any of that exploitation aspect to it. What's the fun and that no, but you're you're right well, And it's also cool to see this immersive approach to dementia care catching on in other places, like I read there's a similar facility in Ontario. Now there's actually a daytime care center in San Diego and it's set to open I think later this year,

and that one was partly inspired by hok Awake. So at a daytime center, and I guessink the patients don't actually live there full time. Yeah. So the project is largely the brainchild of Scott Tardey, who's the CEO of a nonprofit called Glenner Alzheimer's Family Care Centers, and his idea was to use set design to craft this immersive environment for Alzheimer's patients to visit and reminisce during the day.

And reminiscence is really the key word here, because the unique aspect of this project is that it's patterned after a clinical practice called reminiscence therapy. Now, this is when facilitators use prompts like photographs and music to help patients recall events and fee feelings from earlier in their life, and it works really well. There's all kinds of studies to show that this form of treatment actually helps boost

both cognitive function and quality of life. So the idea here was that if you can build an entire town designed to seem familiar, the effects of this kind of therapy might be even greater. So I'm curious, how do you make a place feel familiar to a whole bunch of different people. Well, the nonprofit did something really smart here. They designed the whole town, which is called Glenner Town Square by the way, to look like it's from the

period between nineteen fifty three and nineteen sixty one. And they did this because that's the period when most of

today's dementia patients were young adults. So, for example, if a patient is in their early eighties and two thousand eighteen, that means they were born in the mid nineteen thirties and would have been you know, eighteen nineteen twenties, somewhere around that in the mid fifties, right, So that's interesting, But like why focus on when they were young adults over when they were kids or adults or some other

period of their lives. Well, apparently the memories from the person's twenties and thirties are the ones that stick around the longest. It Scott tart To explained, quote graduation from high school, college, first jobs, marriage, perhaps children, These are the milestones typically in somebody's life. So that twenty year

period seems to be where memories are the strongest. M I mean, it's really interesting, and I think it's curious that like this example is more pleasant filled than Truman Show, but it's it really is stunning to see how people are thinking outside the box and coming up with new

approaches to deal with Alzheimer's. But you know that there's one group of people affected by Alzheimer's that we haven't talked much about today, and and that's the tens of millions of people who watched their loved ones struggle with Alzheimer's. And what I find so inspiring about the ordeal is that despite all the pain, they go through while caring for friends and family members, they remain eager to find the disease in any way they can. Yeah, that's very true.

And actually I found this Wired article from last September that talks about a new way everyday people are helping researchers just get a little bit closer to that cure for Alzheimer's. And this program is called Stall Catchers, and it's actually a video game where players examine images of mouse brains and they try to spot any clogged blood vessels, which they call stalls in this case, and and those

could be obstructing blood flow in the brain. This kind of reduced cerebral blood flow has been linked to Alzheimer's, So if you can treat this, there's a chance that memory loss could actually be reversed. And the method has already proven effective and lab mice. But there's one important caveat, and that's that all the drugs tested so far to improve blood flow have also destroyed the mice's ability to ward off infections, which is obviously a deal breaker for humans.

And so as a result of this, researchers continue to test new drugs in search of one that will leave patients immune systems intact. But here's the problem. You know, every time they test the new drug, they then have to check images of the mice brains for stall halls in order to see if that medicine is or isn't working. And since each new drug brings about thirty thousand images, to sort through the results of each trial can take up to a year just a process. Wow. So so

I'm guessing that's where the game comes in. Yeah, that's exactly where it comes in. So the researchers have teamed up with this nonprofit innovator called the Human Computation Institute, and so together they've developed this online game to help crowdsource the data that they need. Players will sift through thousands of grainy, black and white slides of these mice brains, and they're hunting for any sign of stalls, which show

up as these small black spots in the images. So far, more than six thousand people have logged onto play Stall Catchers, and that's helped speed up the researchers work tremendously. In fact, when game activity is at its peak, the players effectively complete a week's worth of research in a single hour. So process that you know would otherwise take decades, might just take a few years instead, which could really mean all all the difference for patients currently dealing with Alzheimer's.

I mean that that really is incredible. So do we have any info on who the user basis for Stallcatchers, like? Is it mostly people whose friends and family have been affected by Alzheimer's? Yeah, I mean that's really the heart of the game's community, and and that, to me is such a powerful reminder of why it's important to not be discouraged when the latest promising treatment for Alzheimer's falls through. And this is something Miranda Cats actually touches on in

her piece for Wired. She's describing how the friends and family members of Alzheimer's patients have responded to stall Catchers, and this is how she puts it, Frustrated by high nonprofit overheads and the glacial pace of research, they've left at an opportunity to take things into their own hands. And though a true cure for Alzheimer's is still distant, Stallcatchers has already proven an effective treatment for one of the diseases most insidious symptoms, helplessness. Yeah, I mean that

that really is so important to keep in mind. You know, according to the All Cemer's Association, more than of what we know about the disease was only discovered in the last twenty years. So while progress might seem slow when you consider what we've known about Alzheimer's for over a century, now, at least we're now at a point where researchers are

covering a massive amount of ground fairly quickly. And I know it sounds cliche, but we really are closer to a cure than ever before, even if that happy outcomes still has many years left to go. Yeah, that's true. And you know, in the meantime, you've got these ridiculously smart people that will continue coming up with new and clever ways to manage symptoms in Alzheimer's patients and to

keep hope alive in their loved ones. Yeah. So with that in mind, what do you say we dive into the fact off and check out a few more promising approaches. All right, let's do it, h Okay, So I want to talk about a couple of very different groups that have made for very interesting studies. And the first is in a village in the mountains of northwestern Colombia, and it's called Antioquia, which happens to be home to the world's largest concentration of Alzheimer's suffers, And to make matters

more difficult, they're primarily people dealing with early onset Alzheimer's. Now, this is because of a gene that's been passed down through the generations and has unfortunately stayed in the population because of inbreeding, and sadly, what it often means is that rather than children eventually taking care of their parents as those parents age, the reverse often happens, where the elderly population is having to care for their children in

their forties and fifties. Oh man, that's tragic. So in our research for today's episode, I was reading about how scientists have been able to study the gradual impact of Alzheimer's on writers as they battled the disease. And one of these was Iris Murdoch, who is this philosopher and writer who is eventually unable to write because her demension

has just got so bad. But because she wrote twenty six novels, researchers were able to look at her writing over time and found that while the structure of her novels pretty much stayed the same, in her later works, the vocabulary was far more limited, and there was actually a similar study downe on Agatha Christie's work and they found a twenty decrease in her vocabulary later in her

writing career. In fact, you know, it's kind of strange, but one of her last novels, Elephants Can Remember, actually involves the writer dealing with memory issues. But you know, the whole thing really is fascinating that if you have this legacy of written work, you know, it's not just literature departments but scientists who can actually analyze it for humanity. Yeah, it's definitely interesting. They're they're taking a look at that. So I mentioned earlier there was another group that also

made for very interesting studies. And the other one I wanted to talk about is this multi decade study. It's called the nun Study, and it's actually one of the largest Alzheimer's studies ever conducted. There was a researcher from the University of Minnesota named David Snowden that got the study going in the mid nineteen eighties, and it was with a group called the school Sisters of Notre Dame who agreed not only to have these certain evaluations done

during their lives. It also to have their brain studied after they passed away. Now, what makes this group so helpful to study is that it's a relatively homogeneous group that lives pretty similar lifestyles. So it's a good bit more control than what you could do with with most

other groups. The study is actually still going, but they've had some very interesting findings over the years, and including the fact that researchers have been able to look at autobiographical essays that these sisters wrote when they joined the sisterhood, not on average that would have been in their early twenties, and even from those essays, they are able to predict those who are more likely to develop Alzheimer's. So those who wrote the more complex essays were found to be

less likely to develop the disease. It's just it's just wild to me that they could find predictors like that so early in these women's lives. Oh man, that is fascinating. So here's something I think about a lot, right there. All these studies out there that tell us one week that something is bad for us, and then the next week it's good for us. And here's another one of

those studies, and it's about cell phone use. Well, I mean, I understand that that it might not be as harmful as we once feared, but how in the world could this be a good thing. Yeah, so I'm not suggesting anyone start increasing their cell phone use, but a study out of South Florida did find the exposing mice to microwave radiation from cell phones both seemed to protect them from Alzheimer's and in some case even seemed to reverse

the effects. So, as one of the study leads, this guy wants Sanchez Ramo said, quote, it's such dramatic and counterintuitive effect. I joked that the animals must have been mislabeled or that the power wasn't switched on. And you know that this effect was there for both the mice who were exposed to the radiation before they showed signs of Alzheimer's and for those who were exposed after they

started showing signs. And again, you know, we're not recommending anyone start using their phones more because of this interesting study. It's just that it's fascinating to think that there's studies that you don't expect the results to come out the way they do. You know, I've actually got another one like that where you never know if the effect of

something is going to be positive or negative. And this one involves caffeine, and of course we bring the mice in again for a study, and it's a study led by researcher Gary Aaron Dash and his team found that a group of mice who were bred to end up with Alzheimer's, if one group was given regular water to drink and the other was given water with caffeine infused in it, those who had receive the caffeine actually had

a fifty percent decrease in their beta amyloid levels. No, those were, of course those tangled proteins that we talked about earlier, And the amount of caffeine was roughly the equivalent of giving a person five cups of coffee and

a day. And while this was a promising finding that perhaps caffeine could be introduced in some way to help those who have already developed Alzheimer's, it's of course still early, And as with the study you last mentioned, there's definitely not a recommendation here that people go out and start consuming lots of caffeine. So, you know, I do think it's good to end on a couple of hopeful facts, even if there's still a long way to go with

all these studies. And I actually say we should dedicate today's trophy to the many brilliant researchers, Kara loved Ones and millions of brave patients who remained determined to fight this disease. I second that. So here's the continued progress and the fight against Alzheimer's. Thanks so much for listening, Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even

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