Medicine & Health

Researchers at the School of Medicine have found that immune cells that typically protect neurons from damage may be the link between such early and late brain changes in Alzheimer’s disease. Breaking that link could lead to new approaches to delay or prevent the disease.

Centene Corp. and the School of Medicine announced a partnership April 8 to transform and accelerate research into treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, breast cancer, diabetes and obesity. As part of the partnership, Centene will fund up to $100 million over 10 years in research at the university.

A study in mice and people from the School of Medicine shows that sleep deprivation causes tau levels to rise and tau tangles to spread through the brain, accelerating Alzheimer’s brain damage.

A simple blood test reliably detects signs of brain damage in people on the path to developing Alzheimer’s disease – even before they show signs of confusion and memory loss, according to a new study from the School of Medicine and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases.

Monique Williams, AB ’95, MD ’99, MSCI ’08, is a physician with expertise in geriatric medicine and an advocate for including underrepresented populations in medical studies.

A new study from the School of Medicine has found that decreased deep sleep is associated with early signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

A new study at the School of Medicine finds disparities between African-Americans and Caucasians in a key biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease — suggesting that tools to diagnose the disease in Caucasian populations may not work as well in African-Americans.

A long-term study of adult children of Alzheimer’s patients — led by the School of Medicine — aims to define who is likely to develop the disease and when, and to establish a timeline for how quickly the disease will progress.

Chronic poor sleep has been linked to cognitive decline. A new study from the School of Medicine shows that a sleepless night causes levels of the Alzheimer’s protein amyloid beta to rise faster than the brain’s waste-disposal system can remove it. Persistently high levels of the protein can set off a cascade of brain changes leading to dementia.

Using a new imaging agent that binds to tau protein and makes it visible in positron emission tomography (PET) scans, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that measures of tau are better markers of the cognitive decline characteristic of Alzheimer’s than measures of amyloid beta seen in PET scans.