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Home » Forget It All: Alzheimer’s Fatal Epidemic

FIRST COUSIN REMOVED
Alan Berliner: In Loving Memory of Edwin Honig 1919-2011
with a sort of trailer below, edited by Alan Berliner –


The Alzheimer’s Association Website

From the BBC:
Currently 101 million people require care, but a report from Alzheimer’s Disease International warns the figure will rise to to 277 million.
Many needing care have dementia, and the report warns there will be a “global Alzheimer’s epidemic”.
The report’s author said countries like India and China would be hard hit – and must start planning services now.
Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia. Symptoms include loss of memory, mood changes, and problems with communicating and reasoning.
More than 35 million people live with dementia across the world, according to the World Health Organization. More than half are living in low and middle income countries.
The report reveals that as the world population ages, the traditional system of informal care by family, friends and the community will need much greater support.
Just over one in 10 people aged 60 or over needs long-term care, according to the report. This includes daily help with things like washing, eating, dressing and using the toilet.
It can put huge pressure on families. Carers often have to give up work to look after elderly relatives.

Prof Martin Prince, from King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, the author of the report, said lower and middle income countries including India and China need to urgently start planning services to deal with the “epidemic”.
“The social and economic changes happening in those countries are inevitably going to mean that family carers will be less available.
“Things like the decline in fertility rates mean people are going to have fewer children.
“Women are also better educated so are more likely to join the paid workforce and are going to be less likely to be available to provide care.”
And he said an increase in migration between countries, and from rural to urban areas amongst younger people meant there would be a lot of older people “left behind”.
The report makes a range of recommendations including giving paid and unpaid carers “appropriate financial rewards” and monitoring the quality of care both in care homes and in the community.
A spokesperson for the Alzheimer’s Society in the UK said: “Dementia is the biggest health crisis facing the world today.

Change in Number of Deaths Between 2000 and 2010

2013 Costs of Alzheimer’s = $203 Billion

Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States.

More than 5 million Americans are living with the disease.

1 in 3 seniors dies with Alzheimer’s or another dementia.

In 2012, 15.4 million caregivers provided more than 17.5 billion hours of unpaid care valued at $216 billion.

Nearly 15% of caregivers for people with Alzheimer’s or another dementia are long-distance caregivers.

In 2013, Alzheimer’s will cost the nation $203 billion. This number is expected to rise to $1.2 trillion by 2050.



Three Films To Watch:
FIRST COUSIN REMOVED
When the filmmaker Alan Berliner fed Edwin Honig, the distinguished poet, translator, critic and university professor, the line, “Mirror, mirror on the wall…” Honig responded, “You be camera and I’ll be all.”

Knighted by the President of Portugal and the King of Spain for his work as a translator of Spanish and Portugese poems and literature.

“Good poetry should touch people in their souls.  Don’t flinch and don’t be afraid.  This is what I do.  I try to find opportunities to get to the essence of what it means to be human.”  E. H.

LAST POEM

He wrote poems.
They had a private sound.
A few were long
and ran aground.
Some were short-
too bitter
or too sweet.
The rest were wild, the worst discreet

Edwin Honig

A review in the NYTimes:

A Descent Chronicled With Care

‘First Cousin Once Removed’ Documents Edwin Honig’s Life

By NICOLAS RAPOLD
Published: September 15, 2013

The poet Edwin Honig in “First Cousin Once Removed.”

Directed by Alan Berliner – 1 hour 18 minutes; not rated

“Recalling who I was, I see somebody else” begins a poem by Fernando Pessoa, quoted in Alan Berliner’s “First Cousin Once Removed.” In Mr. Berliner’s moving and mysterious documentary, the poet and translator Edwin Honig picks his way through his mind and memories in the falling shadow of Alzheimer’s. It’s the latest of Mr. Berliner’s dogged investigations into identity and family, and his strongest work yet, elevated by the presence of another artist in Mr. Honig, playfully insightful and eloquent even as his powers wane.

Mr. Honig, who was 91 when he died in 2011, is interviewed in the peaceful solitude of humble living quarters, by a window with a view of rustling trees. A nimble montage of Mr. Berliner’s visits — Mr. Honig was his cousin — neatly establishes an award-winning poet’s failing memory and yet open mind, as well as a filmmaker’s touching persistence.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” Mr. Berliner says at one point in the stop-and-start questions and answers that follow. “You be camera, and I’ll be all,” Mr. Honig responds.

Mr. Honig cuts a striking figure in the film, with his aquiline nose, shock of white hair and knowing gaze, making it easy to picture him in the past as a professor, critic and mentor. Into the oblivion of advanced age, he freestyles poetry and offers frank answers or blank verbal shrugs. But Mr. Berliner, like a painter working at different times of day, also shows Mr. Honig speechless, making birdlike noises or simply drumming on the arms of his chair.

Careful montage shapes these views of Mr. Honig and interviews with family members and friends into a sensitive, unified portrait of a poet and a human being. Language and self come across as intertwined and (as for all of us) perhaps more unstable or fluid than we like to admit. Yet even when all else has failed, rhythm and sound endure for Mr. Honig (the drumming, the noises). Mr. Berliner’s use of typewriter key-punches and pings — a sonic motif he has used before — never lets text and writing fade from the story.

Mr. Berliner doesn’t shy from specifics of his cousin’s life — from Mr. Honig’s hardheaded cantor father to the two children he adopted with his second wife, only to be mercilessly critical as they grew. And since Mr. Honig’s family members are, in a roundabout way, Mr. Berliner’s, the movie enters into a generational dialogue with this filmmaker’s ongoing project in cinematic genealogy. “First Cousin Once Removed” echoes “Nobody’s Business,” Mr. Berliner’s 1996 movie about his hilariously resistant father (who appears briefly here, considerably subdued), or “Intimate Stranger,” his 1991 attempt to reconstruct his Sephardic maternal grandfather’s history.

Mr. Berliner’s son Eli also appears, playing with a delighted Mr. Honig, and one can sense a certain urgency in the filmmaker’s compassion — a desire to draw out his cousin that approaches need. It’s an urge to communicate, even commune, that one can readily sympathize with, and Mr. Berliner’s film bravely brings us to the edge of language and experience.

ANOTHER RECENT FILM, THE GENIUS OF MARIAN by Banker White (will play at the St. Louis International Film Festival) – the trailer:

AND THE 1994 CLASSIC, “COMPLAINTS OF A DUTIFUL DAUGHTER

MORE NEWS ABOUT ALZHEIMER’S

From the BBC News Health Desk)

Alzheimer's brain

10 October 2013

Alzheimer’s breakthrough hailed as ‘turning point’


Professor Giovanna Mallucci says the hope is to arrest the process of brain cell death.

The discovery of the first chemical to prevent the death of brain tissue in a neurodegenerative disease has been hailed as the “turning point” in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease.

More work is needed to develop a drug that could be taken by patients.

But scientists say a resulting medicine could treat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and other diseases.

In tests on mice, the Medical Research Council showed all brain cell death from prion disease could be prevented.

Prof Roger Morris, from King’s College London, said: “This finding, I suspect, will be judged by history as a turning point in the search for medicines to control and prevent Alzheimer’s disease.”

He told the BBC a cure for Alzheimer’s was not imminent but: “I’m very excited, it’s the first proof in any living animal that you can delay neurodegeneration.

“The world won’t change tomorrow, but this is a landmark study.”

Cells starveThe research team at the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit, based at the University of Leicester, focused on the natural defence mechanisms built into brain cells.

Continue reading the main story

Neurodegeneration

  • A neurodegenerative disease is one in which the cells of the brain and spinal cord are lost
  • The functions of these cells include decision making and control of movements
  • These cells are not easily regenerated, so the effects of diseases can be devastating
  • Neurodegenerative diseases include Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and Huntington’s

When a virus hijacks a brain cell it leads to a build-up of viral proteins. Cells respond by shutting down nearly all protein production in order to halt the virus’s spread.

However, many neurodegenerative diseases involve the production of faulty or “misfolded” proteins. These activate the same defences, but with more severe consequences.

The misfolded proteins linger and the brain cells shut down protein production for so long that they eventually starve themselves to death.

This process, repeated in neurons throughout the brain, can destroy movement or memory or even kill, depending on the disease.

This process is thought to take place in many forms of neurodegeneration, so safely disrupting it could treat a wide range of diseases.

The researchers used a compound which prevented those defence mechanisms kicking in and in turn halted neurodegeneration.

Analysis

Human brain

It is rare to get cautious scientists keen to describe a study in mice as a turning point in treating Alzheimer’s.

It is early science, a lot can go wrong between a drug for mice and a drug for humans and the only published data is for prion disease, not even Alzheimer’s.

So why the excitement?

It is the first time that any form of neurodegeneration has been completely halted, so it is a significant landmark. It shows that the process being targeted has serious potential.

If this can be successfully developed, which is not guaranteed, the prize would be huge.

In Parkinson’s the alpha-synuclein protein goes wrong, in Alzheimer’s it’s amyloid and tau, in Huntington’s it’s the Huntingtin protein.

But the errant protein is irrelevant here as the researchers are targeting the way a cell deals with any misfolded protein.

It means one drug could cure many diseases and that really would be something to get excited about.

The study, published in Science Translational Medicine, showed mice with prion disease developed severe memory and movement problems. They died within 12 weeks.

However, those given the compound showed no sign of brain tissue wasting away.

Lead researcher Prof Giovanna Mallucci told the BBC news website: “They were absolutely fine, it was extraordinary.

“What’s really exciting is a compound has completely prevented neurodegeneration and that’s a first.

“This isn’t the compound you would use in people, but it means we can do it and it’s a start.”

She said the compound offered a “new pathway that may well give protective drugs” and the next step was for drug companies to develop a medicine for use in humans.

‘Very dramatic’Prof Mallucci’s lab is also testing the compound on other forms of neurodegeneration in mice but the results have not yet been published.

Side effects are an issue. The compound also acted on the pancreas, meaning the mice developed a mild form of diabetes and lost weight.

Any human drug would need to act only on the brain. However, this gives scientists and drug companies a starting point.

David Allsop, professor of neuroscience at Lancaster University described the results as “very dramatic and highly encouraging” but cautioned that more research was needed to see how the findings would apply to diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Dr Eric Karran, the director of research at the charity Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “Targeting a mechanism relevant to a number of neurodegenerative diseases could yield a single drug with wide-reaching benefits, but this compound is still at an early stage.

“It will be important for these findings to be repeated and tested in models of other neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease.”

Alzheimer’s brain scan detects tau protein
By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News
19 September 2013

Pioneering brain imaging that can detect the build-up of destructive proteins linked to Alzheimer’s has been developed by Japanese

It could lead to new ways of diagnosing the condition and of testing the effectiveness of new drugs.

The technology, reported in the journal Neuron, can identify inside a living brain clumps of a protein called tau that is closely linked to the disease.

Alzheimer’s Research UK said it was promising work.

Alzheimer’s disease is a problem for researchers trying to come up with a cure. The brain starts to die years before any symptoms are detected, which means drugs are probably given too late.

A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s cannot be made with absolute certainty until a patient has died and their brain is examined. It is also not 100% clear what is the cause of the dementia and what are just symptoms.

One protein, called tau, is very closely linked to the disease, with tangles of tau thought to be one way in which brain cells are killed.

The team, lead by the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba, used positron emission tomography to build a 3D picture of tau in the brain.

They developed a chemical that could bind to tau and then be detected during a brain scan.

Brain scan Finding tau in the brain

Tests on mice and people with suspected Alzheimer’s showed the technology could detect tau.

Dr Makoto Higuchi, from the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Japan, said: “Positron emission tomography images of tau accumulation… provide robust information on brain regions developing or at risk for tau-induced neuronal death.”

The research is at an early stage, but it could eventually lead to an actual test for Alzheimer’s disease.

It might also allow researchers to closely follow the impact drugs that affect tau have on the brain.

Another protein – beta amyloid – is also linked to Alzheimer’s and can be detected in similar tests.

Dr Eric Karran, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This promising early study highlights a potential new method for detecting tau – a key player in both Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementia – in the living brain.

“With new drugs in development designed to target tau, scans capable of visualising the protein inside the brain could be important for assessing whether treatments in clinical trials are hitting their target.

“If this method is shown to be effective, such a scan could also be a useful aid for providing people with an accurate diagnosis, as well as for monitoring disease progression.”

 “Remember how to forget, no more.” E. H.

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