A newly identified protein pathway may link blood-brain barrier deterioration to age-related cognitive decline.
Category: neuroscience – Page 4
IWMT and Human Consciousness Hypothesis — Adam Safron, Victoria Klimaj and Zahra Sheikhbahaee
“IWMT and Human Consciousness Hypothesis”
A talk by Adam Safron, Victoria Klimaj and Zahra Sheikhbahaee recorded live at the AAAI 2026 conference.
Ceperognastat in Early Symptomatic Alzheimer Disease: A Randomized Clinical Trial
This multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 2 trial of ceperognastat in participants with early symptomatic AD was conducted at 72 centers in Australia, Canada, Japan, Poland, and the US from September 2021 to July 2025. The study adhered to the ethical principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki20 and other international guidelines. All participants provided written, informed consent before any study-related procedures. The study followed the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) reporting guideline.21 The protocol was approved by an ethics committee at each participating center, and unblinded safety data were reviewed approximately every 3 months by an independent unblinded external data and safety monitoring committee. Participants were compensated for study participation. The study protocol and statistical analysis plan are provided in Supplements 1 and 2, respectively.
Eligible participants were aged 60 to 85 years and had a Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score of 22 to 30, Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR) Global Score of 0.5 or 1 with a memory box score greater than or equal to 0.5, elevated plasma level of tau phosphorylated at residue 217 (p-tau217), and evidence of elevated brain tau levels by flortaucipir F18 positron emission tomography (PET) scan at the time of screening. Demographic information, including race and ethnicity, was collected to allow for characterization of potential differences in treatment effects by demographic characteristic. Race and ethnicity were self-reported by participants based on fixed categories. All study participants and study staff were blinded to treatment assignment during the treatment phase.
Blood Test Helps PCPs Diagnose AD With Specialist-Level Accuracy
LONDON — Blood-based biomarker (BBM) testing may enable primary care physicians (PCPs) to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as accurately as dementia specialists, potentially expanding access to accurate diagnosis beyond memory clinics, new research suggests.
In a prospective study of more than 1,300 patients, PCPs achieved 93% diagnostic accuracy after reviewing BBM results, which was comparable to the 94% accuracy of dementia specialists. The test also changed clinicians’ diagnoses and management plans in a substantial proportion of cases.
“By equipping primary care practitioners with blood test results, we see that they’re as accurate as dementia experts in definitely ruling out [AD],” study investigator Sebastian Palmqvist, MD, PhD, senior consultant neurologist and associate professor, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, told Medscape Medical News.
Sugar-Coated Nanoparticles Shrink Deadly Brain Tumors in Mice
Cancers don’t come much worse than the brain cancer glioblastoma, and it is notoriously difficult to treat. Even with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, fewer than 30 percent of patients are alive two years after diagnosis.
Scientists are busy hunting for treatment approaches that can improve those survival rates, and a team from Oregon State University has now found a potential new angle for attacking these tumors: sugar-coated nanoparticles.
As detailed in a mouse study published in the Journal of Controlled Release, the sugar ‘disguise’ used by the nanoparticles helps them cross the blood-brain barrier to the site of cancer, while also directly targeting glioblastoma and avoiding measurable toxicity in major organs.
Epidurals not linked to increased harm for newborns or children
Having an epidural during labor is not associated with clinically significant increased risks of harm to newborn babies, including brain injury, severe breathing problems, sepsis and death, or cerebral palsy later in childhood, according to a study published in The BMJ.
The researchers say these findings “support widening availability and equitable access to epidural analgesia as a safe component of intrapartum care.”
Epidural analgesia in labor provides effective pain relief and may help reduce complications in mothers after giving birth, but evidence of its effect on newborn and child health is limited.
The invisible wearable: New skin sensors advance health monitoring
While wearable health sensors are becoming increasingly common, current iterations are awkward to wear. For example, devices attached to the face can draw unwanted attention, increase self-consciousness and influence the signals users are trying to measure. However, recent research may have found a solution by introducing ultrathin sensors that cannot be seen by observers or felt by the wearer.
In an article published in Science Advances, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, and collaborating institutions reported developing thin, stretchable on-skin electrodes that are effectively invisible when worn on the face. The new technology can measure biological signals while remaining undetectable by eye and touch, allowing monitoring to take place under more natural conditions.
Biosignals such as eye movements, facial muscle activity and brain activity provide valuable information for health care monitoring and human-machine interaction. However, conventional facial electrodes can alter a person’s appearance and affect social interactions, creating what are called appearance artifacts—changes in behavior or psychological state caused simply by wearing a device that the individual and others can see.
Predicting Risk of Cognitive Impairment With Alzheimer Disease Blood Biomarkers
Alzheimer disease is the most common cause of dementia in older individuals. Cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers and amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) can accurately detect Alzheimer disease brain pathology, but the perceived risks, costs, and limited availability have contributed to low rates of biomarker testing in the clinic.1 With recent approvals of disease-modifying, amyloid-targeting therapies, incorporation of biomarkers into clinical practice has become more important for medical decision-making. Fortunately, blood-based biomarkers of Alzheimer disease pathology have advanced rapidly in recent years and are now increasingly used in research, clinical trials, and clinical practice.2 Blood-based biomarkers are highly scalable and promise to improve accurate diagnosis of Alzheimer disease, with the potential for much greater reach than cerebrospinal fluid or PET tests.2 Among the blood-based biomarkers, plasma phosphorylated tau 217 (p-tau217) has demonstrated the highest accuracy in detecting amyloid pathology and also reflects tau pathology to some degree.3-5
Although Alzheimer disease biomarkers are increasingly being incorporated into clinical practice in patients with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia (the populations for which amyloid-targeting therapies have demonstrated clinical benefit), these measures are also sensitive to early biological changes associated with Alzheimer disease that precede the onset of clinical symptoms.6 Indeed, these biological changes are thought to begin a decade or more prior to the onset of cognitive decline, during an asymptomatic phase of disease that has often been referred to as preclinical Alzheimer disease.7 Importantly, current Alzheimer’s Association clinical practice guidelines limit testing for Alzheimer disease pathology using blood-based and other Alzheimer disease biomarkers to individuals with objective cognitive impairment undergoing diagnostic evaluation in specialty care; clinical testing of cognitively unimpaired older adults is not recommended at this time.2
However, in the research setting, unimpaired individuals with biomarker evidence of Alzheimer disease pathology have been the focus of numerous natural history studies and, more recently, secondary prevention trials testing whether targeting pathology can forestall the onset of cognitive impairment.8 Studies have demonstrated that higher plasma p-tau217 levels in cognitively unimpaired individuals are associated with higher risk for future cognitive decline and progression to mild cognitive impairment or dementia.9-11 The ability of blood-based biomarkers to detect early Alzheimer disease pathology in cognitively unimpaired individuals with high sensitivity has already been translated to clinical trials of amyloid-targeting therapies. The TRAILBLAZER-ALZ 3 clinical trial enrolled cognitively unimpaired individuals with elevated p-tau217 and is evaluating whether donanemab reduces progression to cognitive impairment.
