A New Tack to Stave Off Alzheimer's Years before the First Symptom

The new mantra for researchers fighting Alzheimer’s disease is “go early,” before memory loss or other pathology appears. The rationale for this approach holds that by the time dementia sets in the disease may already be destroying brain cells, placing severe limits on treatment options. Some large clinical trials are now testing drugs intended to clear up the brain’s cellular detritus—the aggregations of amyloid and tau proteins that may ultimately destroy brain cells. So far this approach has had decidedly mixed results.

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