But as The New York Times pointed out in a Page One story Sunday, scientists still don’t know how to prevent the dreaded malady’s onset. The headline on The Times story, “Years Later, No Magic Bullet Against Alzheimer’s,” opens with a “court” that the National Institutes of Health sponsored last spring.  

 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/health/research/29prevent.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=alzheimer’s%20disase&st=cse

The court, which included 15 scientists and input from Duke University, was gathered to judge, based on evidence, which treatments, foods, vitamins and behaviors can prevent Alzheimer’s disease or slow down its progression.

The bottom line, according to The Times, was this: ”Currently, no evidence of even moderate scientific quality exists to support the association of any modifiable factor (such as nutritional supplements, herbal preparations, dietary factors, prescription or nonprescription drugs, social or economic factors, medical conditions, toxins or environmental exposures) with reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”

 The flaw with much of the current information about what can prevent Alzheimer’s is that there is no evidence to back it up, or the research has flaws, the NIH court found.

“Most studies observed people who happened to use or not use a possible preventive measure and then determined whether they got Alzheimer’s or not,” The Times said. “Such studies, known as observational ones, are not the gold standard, like those in which people are randomly assigned to take a pill or do something like exercise, or not. Observational studies are useful in generating hypotheses but are not proof.”

The article ends with a heart-breaking story about a married couple, Elise and Bill Schoux. She is 53 and healthy, while he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at age 70. Bill had lead a healthy life, exercises, and had an interesting job that took him around the world.

When they learned Bill had Alzheimer’s, Elise told The Times, “For two weeks, we were at a loss, we would burst into tears. How could this be?”

So far, there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease. But there is abundant research being done now on the disease, and there was promising news last week from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Scientists there have successfully slowed down memory loss and suppressed  the diminishment of learning abililty on mice that have Alzheimer’s. These MIT researchers did this by working with a gene in the mouse brain, SIRTU, which regulates the production of sirtuin one, a type of protein.

Both The Wall Street Journal, in a story headlined “Gene Shows Promise for Alzheimer’,”  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704421304575383341668014752.html

and The New York Times, in an article headlined “Researchers Find Potential in a New Approach to Alzheimer’s Disease,”  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/health/research/24alzheimers.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

wrote about MIT’s findings last week.

Of course, the hope is that a drug based on the MIT research can be developed for humans that will increase their sirtuin levels, and thus ward off Alzheimer’s disease. That is a big leap, but if offers some hope to those praying for a cure.

According to The Journal’s explanation, the MIT researchers genetically engineered mice to produce more sirtuin. As those mice got older, they retained more of their memory and cognitive functions. The mice without the additional sirtuin, or no sirtuin at all, suffered significant drops in their learning  abilityand memory as they got older.

 Alzheimer’s affects as much as one-third of those who reach age 80, according to The Journal, with its hallmark symptoms of  memory loss and impaired thinking. Those are believed to be caused by amytoid plaques in the brain. The Journal explained that these plaques are created when special proteins “get broken up into smaller fragments known as amytoid peptides.”

But these peptdes can be broken down into even smaller fragments, at which point that aren’t harmful to the brain. And this is exactly what sirtuin does, according to The Journal.   

The Times story, which ran a day after The Journal’s, noted that there are already substances that activate sirtuin in humans. One of them is resveratrol, which can be found in red wine and some foods. And a company, Sirtrus, has developed drugs that duplicate the effects of resveratrol, according to The Times.

The paper wrote that there is a lot of research being done on sirtuin because it seems to promote longevity, in part “because it seems to protect the body’s various organs against disease by stepping up maintenance programs.”