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Cocaine is one of the most widely-used illicit drugs i n the Western world and is highly addictive. A report last year by the UK government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs found that almost one in 10 of all 16-to 59-year-olds have used cocaine in their lifetime. Cocaine use was implicated in, but not necessarily the cause of 234 deaths in Scotland, England and Wales in 2013. However, despite significant advances in our understanding of the biology of addiction -- including how the brains of people addicted to cocaine may differ in structure -- there is currently no medical treatment for cocaine addiction; most individuals are treated with talking or cognitive therapies. A team of researchers led by Dr Karen Ersche from the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge examined brain tissue in 44 people who were addicted to cocaine and 44 healthy control volunteers. In the cocaine group, they detected excessive amounts of iron in a region of the brain known as the globus pal...

"The effects of cognitive training in dementia patients have been studied actively during recent decades but the quality and reliability of the studies varies," says licensed neuropsychologist Eeva-Liisa Kallio. She reviewed 31 randomized controlled trials on cognitive training in dementia patients. Kallio's reserch paper "Cognitive Training Interventions for Patients with Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review" was published in  Journal of Alzheimer's Disease . Some of the studies in the review focused primarily on cognitive training and in others cognitive training was part of broader cognitive or multi-component intervention. "Many of the studies reported effects on cognitive functions immediately after the intervention but only few studies included follow-up of the patients or showed improvement in cognitive functions that were not directly linked to the skills trained in the intervention," Kallio says. In the studies, cognitiv...

"The health of your vascular system in midlife is really important to the health of your brain when you are older," said Rebecca F. Gottesman, M.D., Ph.D., lead researcher and associate professor of neurology and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In an ongoing study that began in 1987 and enrolled 15,744 people in four U.S. communities, the risk of dementia increased as people got older. That was no surprise, but heart disease risks detected at the start of the study, when participants were between 45-64 years of age, also had a significant impact on later dementia, researchers noted. Dementia developed in 1,516 people during the study, and the researchers found that the risk of dementia later in life was: 41 percent higher in midlife smokers than in non-smokers or former smokers; 39 percent higher in people with high blood pressure (?140/90 mmHg) in middle age, and 31 percent higher in those with pre-hypertension (between 120/80 mmHg and 139...

The adenosine receptor belongs to the GPCR family (G Protein-Coupled Receptors), a large group of proteins located in cell membranes, which are key in the transmission of signals and communication between cells. GPCRs are therefore involved in the majority of important physiological processes, including the interpretation of sensory stimuli such as vision, smell, and taste, the regulation of the immune and inflammatory system, and behaviour modulation. "Cholesterol is an essential component of neuronal membranes, where GPCRs reside along with other proteins. Interestingly, the levels of cholesterol in the membrane are altered in diseases such as Alzheimer's, where GPCRs like the adenosine receptor play a key role," explains Jana Selent, head of the GPCR Drug Discovery research group at the GRIB, a joint programme between Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). "This study has shown that cholesterol can exert direct...

Abnormally high blood sugar levels, or hyperglycaemia, is well-known as a characteristic of diabetes and obesity, but its link to Alzheimer's disease is less familiar. Diabetes patients have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease compared to healthy individuals. In Alzheimer's disease abnormal proteins aggregate to form plaques and tangles in the brain which progressively damage the brain and lead to severe cognitive decline. Scientists already knew that glucose and its break-down products can damage proteins in cells via a reaction called glycation but the specific molecular link between glucose and Alzheimer's was not understood. But now scientists from the University of Bath Departments of Biology and Biochemistry , Chemistry and Pharmacy and Pharmacology, working with colleagues at the Wolfson Centre for Age Related Diseases, King's College London, have unraveled that link. By studying brain samples from people with and without Alzheimer...

But all that could change, thanks to groundbreaking findings to be published in  Science  by a Technion-Israel Institute of Technology team led by Assistant Professor Meytal Landau of the Faculty of Biology. The researchers discovered, for the first time, unique amyloid fibrils through which the pathogenic and highly drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacterium attacks the human cells and immune system. The research could advance the discovery of antibiotics with a novel mechanism of action that will attack key bacterial toxins. The researchers discovered 'ammunition' that assists the infectious bacterium: a novel form of an amyloid fibril whose three-dimensional structure was determined at atomic resolution, revealing the first-of-its-kind structure of this toxic fibril. Amyloids, which are proteins notoriously known for their association with neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, form a network of protein fibrils -- somewhat similar t...