Researchers at the University of Oulu tested a combination of sublingual nitric-oxide pills and a 40-minute vibrating mattress session on 29 adults without Alzheimer's or other cognitive issues. Blood tests showed beta-amyloid 42 levels rose by 35% on average after the treatment, which the team attributes to enhanced clearance of the protein from the brain via the glymphatic system. Side effects were mild, including nausea and headache in six participants.
science.slashdot.org
· 2026-11-07
Actor Patrick Stewart, best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, died Wednesday at his Los Angeles home. A statement posted to his Instagram account said he had been in the care of his wife, Sunny, and cited his death at 86 following complications from Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia.
cnet.com
· 2026-10-29
Researchers conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide association study data from multiple cohorts worldwide, including UK Biobank, BioBank Japan, TwinGene and Swedish dementia studies, to pinpoint genetic variants linked to Alzheimer's disease. The combined data, drawn from de-identified summary statistics and individually consented participant records, pointed to dysregulation in both microglial cells and neurons as central to the disease's genetic architecture.
nature.com
· 2026-10-28
New scientific findings indicate that tiny pollutant particles, including microplastics and airborne contaminants, can enter brain tissue. Researchers say this infiltration may be associated with neurological changes linked to Alzheimer's disease and other brain disorders.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-10-26
Researchers at the University of Kentucky found that temporarily depleting microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, restored more than two hours of sleep per day in mice with Alzheimer's-like brain changes, without removing amyloid plaques. The team, led by Shannon L. Macauley and first author Nicholas J. Constantino, published the findings in Alzheimer's & Dementia, showing mice also spent more time in deep, restorative sleep stages.
sciencedaily.com
· 2026-10-24
Scientists report that molluscum contagiosum virus (MCV), which infects human skin cells, contains a copy of BC200, a noncoding RNA gene unique to humans and related primates that is believed to have been acquired from ancestral genomes roughly 100,000 years ago. BC200 is normally abundant in neurons and is thought to help regulate protein production, but it is also a 'jumping gene' capable of inserting itself elsewhere in the genome, and researchers say MCV appears to be the only known virus to carry it.
science.slashdot.org
· 2026-10-04
Neuroscientist Christin Glorioso, founder of NeuroAge Therapeutics, has created a competition called Younger that pits participants against each other based on measurements of biological age. Entrants will submit samples to services such as TruDiagnostic, which uses epigenetic markers to estimate overall biological age, pace of aging, and the ages of 11 individual organ systems. Glorioso says the contest aims to educate the public about aging clocks and to build what she calls the world's most comprehensive dataset on them.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-10-02
Researchers extracted insoluble tau aggregates from postmortem brains of five Alzheimer's disease patients and six corticobasal degeneration patients, then injected these seeds into the striatum of wild-type mice. Nine to twelve months later, the mice's brains were analyzed using immunohistochemistry and cryo-electron microscopy to assess how the human tau propagated.
nature.com
· 2026-09-30
The OpenAI Foundation, the nonprofit created in October 2025 during OpenAI's governance restructuring, has begun distributing part of its committed $25 billion in philanthropic funding. Recent grants include a $125 million package for open health and life-sciences data, covering $40 million for a University of North Carolina cancer vaccine project, $500,000 to repurpose data from failed biotech firms, and $15 million for research on drug transport across biological membranes, following an earlier $100 million commitment to Alzheimer's disease research. Jacob Trefethen, the foundation's head of life sciences, says this is an early phase of a broader, faster-moving funding effort.
nature.com
· 2026-09-30
An NIH-funded partnership called the PsychAD Consortium has published the largest single-cell map of the human prefrontal cortex, drawing on sequencing data from more than six million cells from nearly 1,500 people. The findings appear across eight studies, including three papers in Nature, and detail gene activity in neurons, immune cells and vascular cells in this brain region tied to planning and emotional regulation.
nature.com
· 2026-09-23
A multi-institution research effort combined brain tissue samples from the Mount Sinai NIH Neurobiobank, the NIMH-IRP Human Brain Collection Core, and the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center to create a harmonized dataset spanning over 1,400 samples. The team standardized clinical measures such as neuritic plaque density (CERAD scores) and cognitive impairment ratings across the different cohorts, alongside demographic and technical variables like age, sex, ancestry and postmortem interval, to enable consistent single-cell transcriptomic analysis of brain disorders.
nature.com
· 2026-09-23
Researchers analyzed human brain tissue samples from people with and without Alzheimer's disease and identified more than 1,000 microproteins that had previously gone undetected. Dozens of these small proteins showed different expression levels in Alzheimer's-affected brains compared with healthy ones. Separately, a mouse study found that immune cells activated by gut infections can travel to the brain's protective membrane and remain there as a lasting defensive memory.
nature.com
· 2026-09-16
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