Lesser Known Causes of Dementia

Dementia refers to the overall decline in brain functioning. It affects memory, language, problem-solving and other thinking skills. There are various types of dementia depending on the cause. It can take on multiple form. Scientists are currently working on finding the cause of dementia but cannot pin-point a single reason. There are ways in which dementia symptoms, such as reduced concentration, withdrawal or depression, memory problems and increasing confusion, can be managed. Progressive dementia refers to types of dementia that cannot be reversed with any medication or nutrient. Dementia caused by protein deposits or certain vitamin deficiencies can be reversed with treatment. Other than bleeding and sweating on the football ground, there are other various other complex reasons that can cause progressive dementia in an individual.

Alzheimer's disease: One of the causes of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease. Patients of Alzheimer’s have plaques and tangles in their brains. These plagues and tangles are made up of proteins called tau and beta-amyloid, respectively. They can damage healthy neurons and fibres in the brain. Apart from protein, Alzheimer’s also contains a genetic factor, which could also lead to dementia in Alzheimer’s patients.

Damage to blood vessels: Other than stroke and heart attack, damaged blood vessels that supply oxygen to the brain can also damage fibres in the white matter of the brain. This condition is called vascular dementia. Stroke can also damage your brain causing difficulties in problem-solving, slowed thinking and trouble focusing. 

Huntington's disease: This inherited condition can cause the breakdown (degeneration) of certain nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Huntington’s usually affects people in the mid-30s. Signs and symptoms, include an intense decline in thinking and cognitive skills.

Traumatic brain injuries: Traumatic brain injuries like falling down and hitting your head at home or hitting your head in a car accident can cause major impact on the skull. This impact can lead to abnormal functioning of brain proteins. This could potentially harm your brain and cause dementia.

Heavy metal poisoning: According to a study, constant exposure to heavy metals, such as lead, can damage the brain causing dementia. According to the study, heavy metals can tinker with the person’s genes and stunt children's growth and damage their brain. 

 

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Breakthrough cell therapy to improve memory following traumatic brain injury

Researchers have developed a breakthrough cell therapy to improve memory and prevent seizures in mice following traumatic brain injury.

The study — ‘Transplanted interneurons improve memory precision after traumatic brain injury’ — was published in the journal of ‘Nature Communications.’

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) affect two million Americans each year and cause cell death and inflammation in the brain. People, who experience a head injury often, suffer from lifelong memory loss and can develop epilepsy.

In the study, the team transplanted embryonic progenitor cells capable of generating inhibitory interneurons, a specific type of nerve cell that controls the activity of brain circuits, into the brains of mice with traumatic brain injury. They targeted the hippocampus, a brain region responsible for learning and memory.

The researchers have discovered that the transplanted neurons migrated into the injury where they formed new connections with the injured brain cells and thrived long term.

Within a month after treatment, the mice showed signs of memory improvement such as being able to tell the difference between a box where they had an unpleasant experience from one where they did not.

They were able to do this just as well as mice that never had a brain injury. The cell transplants also prevented the mice from developing epilepsy, which affected more than half of the mice who were not treated with new interneurons.

“Inhibitory neurons are critically involved in many aspects of memory, and they are extremely vulnerable to dying after a brain injury,” said Robert Hunt, PhD, assistant professor of anatomy and neurobiology at UCI School of Medicine, who led the study.

“While we cannot stop interneurons from dying, it was exciting to find that we can replace them and rebuild their circuits,” added Hunt.

To further test their observations, Hunt and his team silenced the transplanted neurons with a drug, which caused the memory problems to return.

“It was exciting to see the animals’ memory problems come back after we silenced the transplanted cells because it showed that the new neurons really were the reason for the memory improvement,” said Bingyao Zhu, a junior specialist and first author of the study.

Currently, there are no treatments for people who experience a head injury. If the results in mice can be replicated in humans, it could have a tremendous impact on patients. The next step is to create interneurons from human stem cells.

“So far, nobody has been able to convincingly create the same types of interneurons from human pluripotent stem cells,” Hunt said. “But I think we’re close to being able to do this.

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Researchers find new drug to prevent neural deaths

A team of scientists has found a new drug that may prevent neural death through glucose metabolism modification in stressed neurons.

The trials conducted on mice are rather promising for future use in humans. The new drug can be advantageous in neurological conditions ranging from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer's and Huntington's diseases to traumatic brain injury and ischemic stroke.

According to WHO, stroke is the 2nd most common cause of mortality and more than a third of people who have survived a stroke will have a severe disability.

As the population ages, many more millions are poised to develop Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease in the near future.

Glycolysis is generally considered as the metabolic pathway essential for cell survival since it meets cell energy needs in case of intensive energy consumption.

However, it is already known that in the brain tissue, the situation is quite different-different cell types show distinct glucose metabolism patterns.

In Neurons, only a small portion of glucose is consumed vie the glycolysis pathway. At the same time, astrocytes provide nutrients to neurons and utilise glycolysis to metabolise glucose.

These differences are mostly due to the special protein called PFKFB3, which is normally absent in neurons and is active is astrocytes.

In the case of certain neurological diseases, stroke being one of them, the amount of active PFKFB3 increases in neurons, which is highly stressful for these cells and leads to cell death.
Researchers in the in vivo experiments confirmed that a small molecule, the inhibitor or PFKFB3, may prevent cell death in the case of ischemia injury.

Inhibition of PFKFB3 improves co-ordination of mice after stroke and reduced brain infarct volume. Moreover, PFKFB3 inhibitor protects neurons from the amyloid-beta peptide, the main component of the amyloid plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients. 

A Prof. said, " Excitotoxicity is a hallmark of various neurological diseases, stroke being one of them. Our group has previously established a link between this pathological condition and high activity of PFKFB3 enzyme in neurons, which leads to severe oxidative stress and neuronal death".

These promising results bring hope to dozens of millions of patients suffering from life-threatening neurological disease, mentioned a researcher.

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Nearly three-quarters of traumatic brain injuries caused by consumer products

Consumer products are associated with non-fatal traumatic brain injuries in youngsters under 19, a study has revealed.

 The study -- published in the journal of 'Brain Injury' -- showed that 72 per cent of cases across all age groups were attributable to consumer products.

"Structural designs such as uneven flooring, often contribute to falls, which is the leading cause of traumatic brain injury in children," said the study's lead author.

"In most cases, infants and children are safe in bed and when playing sports outside, but our study highlights some of the risks and the priorities in different age groups for preventing serious head injuries," she added.

Authors reviewed injury surveillance data from over four years, from 2010 to 2013. They focused on children and adolescents in five age groups between zero to 19 years and identified the products associated with their injuries.

The investigation provides a comprehensive understanding of the contribution of consumer product-related traumatic brain injuries in children and adolescents.

Children and adolescents accounted for approximately one million non-fatal traumatic brain injury cases treated in emergency departments per year.

In infants under a year, a quarter was caused by falling from beds, while floors were the second leading cause at 14 per cent.

The authors highlighted bunk beds as especially risky. In children aged one to four years, 10 per cent were caused by beds, 10 per cent by stairs and 10 per cent by floors.

As children became more mobile, the leading causes of head injuries moved outside the home.

At aged five to nine years, floors were still the leading cause (6 per cent), but bicycle accidents came second at five per cent.

In the final two age groups, 10-14 years and 15-19 years, American football was the leading cause of traumatic brain injury - at 14 per cent in the younger age group and nine per cent in the oldest. Basketball came second at six per cent and five per cent respectively.

Other activities that contributed to traumatic brain injuries in the final two age groups included bicycles (5 per cent in 10 to 14-year-olds and 3 per cent in 15 to 19-year-olds) and soccer (5 per cent in 10 to 14-year-olds and 4 per cent in 15 to 19-year-olds). 

 

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Affordable new tech for measuring brain blood flow

A new technique for measuring blood flow in the human brain, based on conventional digital camera technology, could be significantly cheaper and more robust than prior methods, say scientists.
The method could be used in patients with stroke or traumatic brain injury, according to the researchers.

“Our setup is very promising, and the cost should be lower,” said study co-author.

The new method, called interferometric diffusing wave spectroscopy, or iDWS, could prove to be less expensive when compared to an experimental technique called diffuse correlation spectroscopy, or DCS.

If you shine a light into a cloudy solution, light particles, or photons, will be scattered in different directions and DCS uses essentially this approach to look inside someone’s skull.

Laser light is shined on the head and as photons from the laser pass through the skull and brain, they are scattered by blood and tissue.

A detector placed elsewhere on the head, where the photons make their way out again, picks up the light fluctuations due to blood motion. These fluctuations provide information about blood flow.

But the light signal is very weak, and the further it passes through the skull and brain tissue, the weaker it gets.

So DCS requires a number of very sensitive, expensive single photon counting detectors. Moreover, boosting the light going in risks burning the patient’s skin.

The researchers, therefore, took a different approach, based on the fact that overlapping light waves will reinforce or cancel each other out, like overlapping ripples on a pond.

They first split the light beam into “sample” and “reference” paths.

The sample beam goes into the patient’s head and another, stronger, reference beam is routed so that it reconnects with the sample beam before going to the detector.

This boosts the signal, meaning that instead of needing about 20 photon-counting detectors that cost a few thousand dollars each, the researchers could use a single complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-based digital camera chip for a fraction of the price.

“The strong reference light enhances the weaker signal from the sample,” the researcher said.

An added advantage is that they do not need to turn off the room lights while making measurements with iDWS, he said.

Eventually, the researchers believe that may even be able to monitor brain blood flow outdoors, under bright sunlight.

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Brain Scan Can Tell PTSD Apart from Traumatic Brain Injury

In 2008, a marine Capt. was deployed in Afghanistan.

The combat engineer’s goal was to detect and remove mines, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and other hazards from roads, clearing the way for troops and supplies to move through.

By the time he left Afghanistan, he had survived three explosive blasts that caused concussions.
These weren’t the first concussions in his life. He’d already had five or six such head injuries from playing sports and from other incidents.

Still, when he first got home, he felt fine. Not just fine, but fortunate that he’d survived Afghanistan unscathed. Or so he thought.

Over the weeks and months following his return, he began to deteriorate. He began experiencing headaches and difficulty sleeping, as well as problems concentrating, focusing, and remembering. He had frequent angry outbursts, which he’d never experienced before.

“I was rude and nasty to people, and the worst part was that I didn't really know just how much I had changed,” he said.

But when he sought medical help, his diagnosis was unclear. A history of surviving explosive attacks, coupled with his symptoms, pointed to two different possible conditions: traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). So which was it?

A Look Into the Brain

A new study published  has found a way to tell TBI and PTSD apart by using brain scans.

The researchers gathered more than 20,000 people with TBI, PTSD, both conditions, or neither. They scanned participants using single-photon emission computer tomography (SPECT), an imaging technique that can measure blood flow to highly specific regions of the brain.

In a smaller group with about 100 patients of each type, they also strictly controlled for demographics and co-occurring conditions.

Although PTSD and TBI can have similar symptoms, in a brain scan, they look nothing alike, the researchers found.

Patients with TBI showed decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex, temporal lobes, and cerebellum. These brain regions govern self-control of mood and behavior, memory formation, and coordinated movement.

Meanwhile, patients with PTSD showed increased activity in the limbic system, basal ganglia, prefrontal cortex, cerebellum, and temporal, occipital, and parietal lobes. Brain regions that are involved in fear processing and emotional regulation, sensory processing, and integration of information are also affected.

Using a computer-driven analysis, in the smaller controlled group, the scientists were able to determine who had PTSD or TBI with 100 percent accuracy. Visual readings performed by humans were only 89 percent accurate, stressing the need to have such analysis performed by computers. In the larger group, accuracy did not exceed 82 percent, even with computer analysis.

“Diagnosis and treatment for PTSD and TBI [are] often based on symptom clusters, and difficulties in differentiating between these brain disorders often arise due to the symptom overlap,” said a primary investigator on the study. “Functional neuroimaging with SPECT may hold the key to differentiating these disorders effectively, eliminating the reliance on self-report data, diagnosis based on symptom clusters, and challenges to diagnosis.”

Tricky Treatment

The Capt. eventually found his way to the clinic, where a brain scan revealed that he was living with both PTSD and TBI. 

“Boy, did I underestimate the value of actually looking at the brain when you have a brain problem,” he said.

With the problem uncovered, his doctors were able to tailor his treatment.

“I felt a dramatic difference right away,” he added. “I felt more mentally sharp and focused than ever.”

When it comes to treating TBI and PTSD, it’s important to be able to tell the two apart. The treatments for one can be harmful for people with the other.

For example, the tranquilizers (benzodiazepines) that people with PTSD use to soothe an overactive brain could pack a dangerous double-punch to the already-underactive TBI brain.

Meanwhile, the regular therapies required to treat TBI could be triggering for someone with PTSD.

Not a Small Problem

Since 2000, more than 300,000 veterans have been diagnosed with TBI and more than 125,000 with PTSD — with no small amount of overlap among them. One study found that 73%  of veterans with TBI also had PTSD.

Among U.S. civilians, about 3.5% of adults experience PTSD — that’s about 8.5 million people. In 2010 alone, there were about 2.3 million emergency department visits for suspected TBI.

The author cautioned in his paper that seemingly mild head impacts that happen during sports can cumulate over a lifetime into repetitive TBI with long-term symptoms.

Amen hopes his work will lead to diagnosis of PTSD and TBI based off biomarkers like the SPECT analysis, rather than symptom-based diagnosis.

“The results of this work offers help to vulnerable populations who suffer from PTSD and TBI — such as veterans — demonstrating that functional neuroimaging offers targeted care and the potential for improved outcomes,” he said.

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