Researchers associate essential tremor with 60 percent increased risk of developing dementia.

Medscape (8/27, Anderson) reported that, according to a study published Aug. 25 in Neurology, “older patients with essential tremor (ET) are almost twice as likely to have dementia compared with their counterparts without ET,” and “ET is associated with about a 60 percent increased risk of developing dementia.” Researchers from Columbia University studied “2,285 white, black, and Hispanic patients aged 65 years and older,” evaluating them “for depressive and neurological symptoms at baseline, and again every 18 months. To determine the presence of ET, the researchers used various handwriting tests and independent analyses by a neurologist.” The investigators found that, “of the 124 patients with ET, 31 (25.0 percent) had dementia, compared with 198 (9.2 percent) of 2,161 control patients.” Surprisingly, “ET was not associated with increased risk of developing” mild cognitive impairment (MCI), even though “many patients with MCI eventually develop dementia.”

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Add Some Zip To Your Memory

On its front page, the New York Times (4/6, A1, Carey) reports that researchers at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, in Brooklyn, NY, have found an experimental medication that appears to block “the activity of a substance that the brain apparently needs to retain much of its learned information. And, if enhanced, the substance could help ward off dementias and other memory problems.” To date, the team has worked only with animals, but “scientists say this memory system is likely to work almost identically in people.” Previous research has indicated that the “brain appears to retain a memory by growing thicker, or more efficient, communication lines between” its cells. The Brooklyn team found that a substance called PKMzeta appears to be responsible for this communication. When animals are “injected directly into their brain with a drug called ZIP that interferes with PKMzeta,” they appear to forget memories, even strong ones of pain or disgust. To date, “researchers have already tried to blunt painful memories and addictive urges using existing drugs; blocking PKMzeta could potentially be far more effective.”

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