News

Could it be that Alzheimer’s disease stems from the toxic remnants of the brain’s attempt to fight off infection?

 

Provocative new research by a team of investigators at Harvard leads to this startling hypothesis, which could explain the origins of plaque, the mysterious hard little balls that pockmark the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.

One night, Adam Elliott stood in his parents’ bedroom and screamed. He flung everything within his reach across the room.

His mother, Wendy Elliott, tried to clam down her second-grader, just like hundreds of times over the past year when his rage flew out of control. Sometimes, he flipped his desk at school or banged his head. One time, he scratched a classmate’s face with a pencil.

The piercing, sob-laden screams ended as Adam passed out on the bedroom floor. The next morning, Wendy mentioned the incident, but the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy remembered nothing from the night before.

Patients with their first episode of psychosis, a sign of schizophrenia, should be tested for an alternative disorder, according to an expert.

 

A small number of patients admitted to hospital with schizophrenia-like symptoms actually have another condition which attacks the brain, a Brisbane study says.

 

The neuronal autoimmune disorder, revealed through a blood test, can be treated early giving patients the best chance of a very good outcome.

 

“If they get the treatment for schizophrenia, they won’t recover, they will stay disabled all their lives,” Associate Professor James Scott told AAP.