Alzheimer’s May Stave Off Cancer, and Vice Versa
Amanda Gardner reports in Business Week:
Researchers have uncovered a bittersweet relationship between two major illnesses: cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
People who have had cancer are less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease, just as having Alzheimer’s disease reduces the risk for cancer, their study found.
“Alzheimer’s was associated with a rather dramatic reduction in cancer risk,” said Dr. Richard Lipton, an attending neurologist at Montefiore Medical Center and professor of neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. “From my perspective, the strengths of the findings are very striking and somewhat unexpected.”
There was no link between Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia, however, suggesting that the association has to do with neurodegenerative factors. Vascular dementia is attributed to damage to the brain’s blood supply…
[continues in Business Week]
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Vaccines For AIDS, Alzheimer’s, Herpes
The AP reports (question: why is it that vaccines are suddenly front page news every day?):
Malaria. Tuberculosis. Alzheimer’s disease. AIDS. Pandemic flu. Genital herpes. Urinary tract infections. Grass allergies. Traveler’s diarrhea. You name it, the pharmaceutical industry is working on a vaccine to prevent it.
Many could be on the market in five years or less.
Contrast that with five years ago, when so many companies had abandoned the vaccine business that half the U.S. supply of flu shots was lost because of factory contamination at one of the two manufacturers left.
Vaccines are no longer a sleepy, low-profit niche in a booming drug industry. Today, they’re starting to give ailing pharmaceutical makers a shot in the arm.
The lure of big profits, advances in technology and growing government support has been drawing in new…
