Weiner emphasized that Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementia “are not infectious diseases” like Creutzfeldt-Jakob. But he said “it may be that a little seed of the disease begins in one neuron in the brain and spreads in a similar way – so it’s infectious within the brain, from one neuron to the next.”

The lead author of the paper is Ashish Raj, PhD, of SFVAMC and UCSF at the time of the study and currently at Weill Medical College, Cornell University, NY; the co-author is Amy Kuceyeski of Weill Cornell.

The study was supported by funds from the National Institutes of Health, some of which were administered by the Northern California Institute for Research and Education. The UCSF California Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center also supported and contributed to the study.

NCIRE - The Veterans Health Research Institute - is the largest research institute associated with a VA medical center. Its mission is to improve the health and well-being of veterans and the general public by supporting a world-class biomedical research program conducted by the UCSF faculty at SFVAMC.

Alzheimer’s disease Middle stage

As Alzheimer’s disease progresses, the changes become more marked. The person will need more support to help them manage their day-to-day living. They may need frequent reminders or help to eat, wash, dress and use the toilet. They are likely to become increasingly forgetful - particularly of names - and may sometimes repeat the same question or phrase over and over because of the decline in their memory for recent events. They may also fail to recognise people or confuse them with others.
Some people at this stage become very easily upset, angry or aggressive - perhaps because they are feeling frustrated - or they may lose their confidence and become very clingy. Other symptoms may include:

-becoming confused about where they are, or walking off and becoming lost
-becoming muddled about time and getting up at night because they are mixing up night and day
-putting themselves or others at risk through their forgetfulness - for example, by not lighting the gas on the cooker
-behaving in ways that may seem unusual, such as going outside in their nightclothes
-experiencing difficulty with perception, and in some cases having hallucinations.

SFVAMC has the largest medical research program in the national VA system, with more than 200 research scientists, all of whom are faculty members at UCSF.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.

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Source: University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)