It's still early days. The thousands of researchers continue to inch along, hoping to find clues and markers and slowly adding to the picture of what goes on to create this condition. Some of what they find will be true fact bits and other things will later be found to be in error, misinterpreted in the early days, or even wrong. As is the case with all medical research.

I was told by someone who does biomedical research but in a different area, it's very many years away before a complete understanding of the disease and ways to treat or prevent it will be known. If ever.

Very interesting, Raven, thank you for posting this.

Rusty

Oh I pray this will come to being! My mother had it and it is such a cruel disease to the patient and the family!

Interesting article. I didn't know that diabetes is a known risk factor for dementia. A vaccine against Alzheimer’s within 5 years would be so wonderful, given our aging population.

It's a move in a positive direction! Always a good thing. Yes it would be a saving grace to have something in 5 years!

I just watched the whole thing, on and on it went and then we get close to the end and that's when they put up the $$$$signes....The people doing this ad are no better than the big time pharmacy companies, claiming to have created a "miracle" when all it does is come right down to "give me your money".....

My husband suffers from serious dementia and I know what it's like to see someone completely become a different person who doesn't know who I am after 63 years of marriage.....AND then to watch and actually start to believe there is help only to be shot down once again, it's heartbreaking.

I'm concerned here since I know the latest trial was just declared a dud. Well, less than a month ago.

Someone is trying hard to scam?

Oh sunny I'm sorry for what you are dealing with. We are slowly and steadily losing my father-in-law to Alzheimers. It is such a cruel disease. Shame on these people if it's all just a scam.

Sunny I don't know what ad you are talking about. I linked to an article on MSN health. There is no ad and nothing about money for anything. What are you referring to?

These are real scientists and real scientific institutions performing these studies. The study comes from researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide Australia in partnership with a ­research team at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, and University of California, Irvine. I have no idea what y'all are referring to about a scam. There are many scientists at different locations all working on research, just because one thing was a failure does not mean that any other research is affected. I certainly would not post any type of scam. We just lost my husband's mother to this horrible disease.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/alzheimers-disease-tau-protein-vaccine-391883

And from here in Houston at Baylor

"Alzheimer’s is a serious disease that affects millions of Americans, and at the moment there is no cure, however a new study suggests we may be on the road to the next best thing: a prevention. According to the study, researchers from Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children's Hospital and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine are working to develop a pill that would prevent the accumulation of toxic molecules in the brain, which might be enough to prevent the disease."

http://www.medicaldaily.com/pill-prevent-alzheimers-discovery-could-protect-human-brain-degenerative-400511

This is real research!

Did you click on my medical news link to the story about the plug pulled on the latest study? Merck has poured money into their study, come so far, and now it's over. I can't believe they'd pull the plug if promising information was out there. I don't want false hopes is my worry.

As I mentioned merck is just one facility that was working on one aspect of the disease. Probably not even related to the same research as these other institutions. One does not have an affect on the other.

I'm with rob on this, it was what I was trying to say but my explanation wasn't very good. Her link was to an article about a Merck product that just got pulled. The publication also had an article about an Eli Lilly drug that was similarly in late stage trials and got pulled in November. Lilly was said to have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on that project, an amount hugely in excess of the funds that academic labs have to spend.

That article also said "Over the past decade, 99 percent of experimental drugs for the disease have failed in clinical trials".

Here's another project that was terminated.

These drug projects would have received a lot of media attention about their promise and may have caused many to have false hope. Research has a lot of ups and downs and is a very long process. False conclusions and misdirection are far more frequently the outcome of research work than silver bullets.

After I read the article you had highlighted, I read another about dementia and how this fellow while doing research to help his wife, discovered the miracle but of course it went on and on and finally to receive this miracle, it would cost...It did start with him using coconut oil and different recipes from a very old lady from India...Well, sorry to say, I was not giving him my credit card number to find out about the miracle pill he was selling....I just went in again to try to get some facts and it's been removed...... I'm all for research and I pray ever day there will be a break through but I'm also so very, very upset with those who are trying to make and take money from suffering victims.......

Why does this "

Really great breakthroughs in Alzheimers research" Go into in the fourth paragraph, "A recent study has linked the variance in climate change to an increased mortality rate among the elderly in New England. Photo: Getty/Matt Cardy" WHAT???? My DMIL and DSil (who was only 67) both died from Alzheimers.

It looks like it's put in the wrong article or spot because it mentions a photo but there is no photo linked to it.