understanding alzheimer's disease & doing research with a mobile game!

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Right now, the best way to diagnose the disease is through a spinal tap or a brain scan. The problem is that the former is invasive and the latter is expensive. Plus, many patients don’t get these tests until they start showing signs of cognitive decline, which means the disease may already be pretty advanced. It’s hard to overstate how important finding a reliable, affordable, and easy-to-use diagnostic is for stopping Alzheimer’s. This call-to-action challenges the research community to develop cutting-edge biomarkers and explore novel diagnostic technologies that would reduce the impact of this devastating disease.

Video to the right explains the study that first talked about the Amyloid cascade Hypothesis.

It describes how Alzheimer's affects the brain, shedding light on the different phases of this complicated, destructive disease.

A scientific film with a 3D modeling made on the inner mechanisms of the brain implicated in the development of Alzheimer's disease.

A large analysis of different types of data from postmortem tests of brain tissue supports the idea that viruses are involved in Alzheimer's disease. one of the key bacteria that cause "gum disease Porphyromonas gingivalis" may also be the root cause of Alzheimer’s disease, a form of dementia.

Investigators have long suspected that pathogenic microbes might contribute to the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) although definitive evidence has not been presented. Whether such findings represent a causal contribution, or reflect opportunistic passengers of neurodegeneration, is also difficult to resolve.




DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE AND DEMENTIA :

Alzheimer’s and dementia are often used interchangeably as many people believe  that one means the other.

In fact, the distinction between the two diseases often causes confusion on the behalf of patients, families and caregivers. Discover how the two diagnoses, while related, are remarkably different.

The amyloid cascade hypothesis

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recent data-driven  approach suggests virus link to Alzheimer's  disease

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Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Players with a high genetic risk for Alzheimer's took less efficient routes to reach checkpoints in the game, researchers found. What's more, the movement patterns were identified among players in the genetic risk pool who had not yet displayed any other memory problems, they Games are self-discovery voyages, in the case of Sea Hero Quest, a step forward in medicine.

Just a few minutes of playing the game could help identify the earliest stages of Alzheimer's in ways existing medical tests can't, researchers have found. According to recent study by the University of East Anglia, every two minutes played of Sea Hero Quest represents 5 hours of lab research towards learning about Alzheimer’s, a horrible disease that destroys life-long memories.

If you’ve ever had a family member suffering from it or know someone in that position, then you know what it means. Sea Hero Quest was developed with the collaboration of Deutsche Telekom, Alzheimer’s Research UK, University College London and the University of East Anglia.

The team studied how people who are genetically pre-disposed to Alzheimer’s disease, play the game - compared to people who are not. The results, published in the journal PNAS, show that people who are genetically at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease can be distinguished from those who are not on specific levels of the Sea Hero Quest game.

The findings are particularly important because a standard memory and thinking test could not distinguish between the risk and non-risk groups.

How APOE4 Contributes:

The apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) variant is the single greatest genetic risk factor for sporadic Alzheimer’s disease (sAD).

However, the cell-type-specific functions of APOE4 in relation to AD pathology remain understudied. Here, researches have utilized CRISPR/Cas9 and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to examine APOE4 effects on human brain cell types.

     the game "sea hero quest" -   helpS scientists fight dementia

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The e4 version of the APOE gene increases an individual's risk for developing

late-onset Alzheimer disease :

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players with the APOE4 gene: " performed worse on spatial navigation tasks"

Sea Hero Quest game players who are known to have a genetic predisposition to the disease consisted of a lab group of 31 volunteers where had been genetically tested to carry the APOE4 gene known to be linked to Alzheimer’s disease. The study group also included 29 people who lacked that gene. The researchers matched both lab groups for age, gender, education, and nationality with the benchmark cohort. 

Data was studied from 27,108 UK players between 50 and 75 years old, which is the most vulnerable age-group to develop Alzheimer’s in the next decade. What the team found was that those at a higher genetic risk, the players with the APOE4 gene, performed worse on spatial navigation tasks.

In the game, worse spatial navigation meant less efficient routes to checkpoint goals.
One researcher, Prof Hornberger, said that the discovery was important because the people showed no memory problems. The result according to Hornberger is that the game can detect people at genetic risk of developing Alzheimer’s based on how they play the game.

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