Forgetting Alzheimer’s

Good news about Alzheimer’s?

Please say yes. After wincing and weeping my way through Julianne Moore’s sure-to-be Oscar-winning performance in Still Alice, I am more than ready to hear it. And I bet you are too.

It is true that I have maintained an as-positive-as-possible outlook on this horrific disease. I wrote a book, Dancing with Rose, (re-named Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer’s in paperback) based on my experiences as an in-the-trenches caregiver at an Alzheimer’s care facility. I wrote that there is life after Alzheimer’s. I wrote that we are more than just the sum of our memories, and that when you lose your memory, you do not lose your self. Your personhood. And I still believe that. But I also know, up close and personal, the devastation of this disease. I am therefore thrilled to tell you about this new research from Stanford.

But first I have to say those words you don’t want to hear: It was conducted on mice.

Which means that, game-changing as the findings of the study may be, we are still many years from effective treatment or, dare I say the word, cure. But this is very very exciting stuff.

It turns out that brains contain cells called microglia that chew up toxic substances and cell debris, calm inflammation and make nerve-cell-nurturing substances. They work as garbage collectors, getting rid of molecular trash strewn among living cells — including clusters of a protein called A-beta, notorious for aggregating into gummy deposits called Alzheimer’s plaques, the disease’s hallmark anatomical feature. We love these microglia. We want these guys vigorously and tirelessly working for us.

The new research from Stanford (published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation) suggests that the massive die-off of nerve cells in the Alzheimer’s- affected brain may be due to these microglia falling down on the job. Most excitingly, the researchers found that, in mice, blocking the action of a single molecule on the surface of microglia restored the cells’ ability to get the job done — and, even more excitingly, reversed memory loss and myriad other Alzheimer’s-like features in the animals.

Yes, reversed.

The ground-breaking idea here is this entirely new approach to preventing and/or curing Alzheimer’s by boosting the brain’s own immune response.

I wish Julianne Moore the best of luck on Oscar’s night. But I wish more that, in the near future, such a portrayal will seem absolutely archaic.