A Cure for Alzheimer's

I recently read an article in Discover, a scientific magazine, about the progress scientists are making in finding a cure for Alzheimer's. For years they had been mystified by the two signs of the disease: amyloid plaques and tau tangles. These are clusters of protein fragments that interfere with relaying messages between neurons in the brain. Until recently they could only study the brains of dead people who had the disease, but with new imaging tools they can now study living people who are at risk. They found that errant genes are causing the disease. Now they are studying what these genes do and developing therapies to stop the disease. During their research they uncovered bits of DNA "that seem to halt the development of the disease." They also found that they need to treat the disease before people begin to show symptoms. Current studies are testing drugs that shrink plaques in the hopes of preventing the disease. Rudolph Tanzi, a neurologist  at Harvard Medical School, believes that "early prediction, early detection and early intervention" is the key to a cure.  Anne Young, another Harvard neurologist, predicts that "within our lifetimes, we will conquer Alzheimer's." After decades of frustration, these developments provide a glimmer of hope for families coping with this devastating disease.