HEALTH

Alzheimer's Patients Show
Rapid Brain-Cell Erosion

Brain cells in Alzheimer's disease patients die in a rapid sweep during an 18-month period, researchers have found.

The scientists who conducted the study used a series of brain scans known as magnetic resonance imaging to measure the thickness of the "gray matter" on the surface of the brain over time.

The 12 patients in the study, all of whom were about 70 years old, initially were considered to have mild Alzheimer's disease. Areas of shrinkage in their brains, which indicated brain-cell death, at first were mainly located in portions of the brain associated with memory.

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But during the following 18 months, extensive brain-cell death swept quickly through the brain "like a burning frontier of cell loss, spreading like a lava flow," said lead researcher Paul Thompson, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine (See his Web page.)

The areas with extensive cell death spread from memory centers to portions of the brain involved in behavior management. By the end of the study, many of the patients were considered to have moderate-to-severe cases of Alzheimer's. The 12 patients were measured against 14 healthy control subjects, of similar age, sex and demographics, who didn't show such gray-matter atrophy.

While few areas of the brain resisted the wave of death, the parts of the brain that process vision and sensation seemed to set up barriers to the destruction engulfing everything around them. In some other degenerative brain afflictions, including "mad cow" disease, the vision and sensation sectors of the brain aren't spared. Determining why or how that resistance occurs could point the way toward possible treatments.

The research, published in the current issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, was funded by the National Institutes of Health and British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC.

The research complements other work, including a large study being done by the National Institute on Aging, measuring the effects of Alzheimer's on the brain. Dr. Thompson said the map of the disease's progression eventually could help drug companies seeking treatments to slow or halt Alzheimer's.

Howard Rosen, an assistant professor in the department of neurology at the Memory and Aging Center at University of California San Francisco, said the study takes a step beyond prior brain-scan studies of Alzheimer's patients. Much of the knowledge about Alzheimer's has come from animal studies or studying the brains of patients who have died.

"We need every measure we can to understand how the disease progresses in humans," Dr. Rosen said. "Importantly, they're doing it in living patients."

Write to Robert McGough at bob.mcgough@wsj.com

Updated February 6, 2003