Add Baxter International’s Gammagard to the ash heap of failed Alzheimer’s drug candidates. Baxter announced today that Gammagard did not provide any cognitive or functional improvement in 390 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. The patients who were enrolled in the Phase III trial received the drug through infusions over an 18 month period. [...]

With sophisticated brain imaging tests now making their way out of research labs or clinical trials, and into the doctor’s office, both patients and physicians will have to confront some important ethical and legal questions on how these tests are used. That’s the message from a seminar on amyloid imaging, hosted by the American Academy [...]

Imagine stepping into a virtual reality environment that recreates in amazing detail the sights, sounds, and smells of a past experience, or a setting that triggers addictive behaviors, such as a bar scene with a favorite drink placed in front of a recovering alcoholic. And then into this virtual reality steps a helpful digital avatar [...]

Rising Dementia Rates are a Global Health Trend A positive aspect of rising living standards in most of the world has been a significant improvement in worldwide average life expectancies, increasing from 52 years in 1960 to 69 years in 2009. Regional differences are even more striking — the average life expectancy for a person [...]

An interesting study published in the journal Neurology suggests that there might be an optimal time window for women to begin hormone therapy (HT) after menopause, at least for the purpose of lowering the chances of Alzheimer’s disease later in life. The study followed more than 1,700 women (all over age 65) for a decade, [...]