John Hardy on Incidence of dementia and Alzheimer disease in 2 communities: Yoruba residing in Ibadan, Nigeria, and African Americans residing in Indianapolis, Indiana.

COMMENT A fascinating paper which raises the suggestion that the reason Africans appraently don't have as high an incidence of AD is because of their lower cholesterol intake. 0 J.Hardy

Nikolaos K. Robakis on Melatonin protects hippocampal neurons in vivo against kainic acid-induced damage in mice.

COMMENT Melatonin has been suggested by several groups to be neuroprotective. Combined with its very low cytotoxicity it may be a good candidate for clinical trials in AD. 0 nikos.robakis

Hiroshi Mori on Isolation of single immunohistochemically identified whole neuronal cell bodies from post-mortem human brain for simultaneous analysis of multiple gene expression.

COMMENT The detailed molecular mechanism of gene expression must be different in each individual neuron. This is particularly important when we consider an neuropathological event in neurodegenerating diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease. 0 mori

Edward Koo on Volumetric MRI study of the caudate nucleus in patients with dementia with Lewy bodies, Alzheimer's disease, and vascular dementia.

COMMENT Not surprising that there are no changes in the caudate to separate the three diseases. But MRI is probably a great approach to continue to explore and exploit? 0 edkoo

Nikolaos K. Robakis on Carnosine, a protective, anti-ageing peptide?

COMMENT This is a rather interesting new idea that people may want to test experimentally. 0 nikos.robakis

Paul Coleman on Perspectives in clinical Alzheimer's disease research and the development of antidementia drugs.

COMMENT This appears to be a good overview of therapeutic agents in the pipeline. 0 Paul_Coleman

Benjamin Wolozin on Substitution of a glycogen synthase kinase-3beta phosphorylation site in presenilin 1 separates presenilin function from beta-catenin signaling.

COMMENT Understanding the regulation of PS1 function is important for AD research. 0 bwolozin

Hiroshi Mori on Expression profiles of multiple genes in single neurons of Alzheimer's disease.

COMMENT The molecular analyses of multiple genes is interesting particularly in a single neuron because AD brain contains various neurons in a different pathological stages. 0 mori

Benjamin Wolozin on Alzheimer's beta-secretase, beta-site amyloid precursor protein-cleaving enzyme, is responsible for cleavage secretion of a Golgi-resident sialyltransferase.

COMMENT BACE is thought to be a potentially important target for therapeutic intervention in AD. BACE1 knockouts appear to be healthy, which suggests that inhibiting BACE might be therapeutically viable. An essential step in predicting any potential toxicity that

Hiroshi Mori on Structural analysis of Alzheimer's beta(1-40) amyloid: protofilament assembly of tubular fibrils.

COMMENT Any evidence on the physicochemical structure of amyloid protein must be welcomed because the essential function is thought to be associated with amyloid structure. 0 mori

Paul Coleman on Prediction of AD with MRI-based hippocampal volume in mild cognitive impairment.

COMMENT 'In older patients with MCI, hippocampal atrophy determined by premorbid MRI-based volume measurements is predictive of subsequent conversion to AD.' This appears to be evidence for a gross morphological change that might be considered to repres

Hiroshi Mori on Molecular dissection of domains in mutant presenilin 2 that mediate overproduction of amyloidogenic forms of amyloid beta peptides. Inability of truncated forms of PS2 with familial Alzheimer's disease mutation to increase secretion of Abeta42.

COMMENT It is challengeable and interesting that dimeric formation may be coupled with truncation of PS2. 0 mori

John Hardy on Use of lipid-lowering agents, indication bias, and the risk of dementia in community-dwelling elderly people.

COMMENT Together these papers (Locatelli et al., Okamura et al., and Rockwood et al.) further the interesting link between cholesterol metabolism and AD 0 J.Hardy

Paul Coleman on Aloys Alzheimer, a coworker of Emil Kraepelin.

COMMENT An interesting historical note. 0 Paul_Coleman

Nikolaos K. Robakis on Phosphatidylinositol and inositol involvement in Alzheimer amyloid-beta fibril growth and arrest.

COMMENT This is a nice paper because it examines the role of lipids in amyloid formation. Such a role was already indicated by several laboratories. There are good evidence indications that the first seeds of amyloid fibrils may form on membranes. 0 nikos.robakis