Must reads

• A September 29, 2014 Washington Post article reported on the potential of blood transfusions to treat Alzheimer's. According to the article, "Next month, people with Alzheimer’s disease will be given the blood of young people in the hope that it will reverse some of the damage caused by the condition…So in early October, a team at the Stanford School of Medicine will give a transfusion of blood plasma donated by people younger than 30 to older volunteers with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. Following the impressive results in animal experiments, the team hopes to see immediate improvements in cognition, but Wyss-Coray cautions that the procedure is still very experimental…Loffredo says the approach of testing young blood in people with Alzheimer’s is fascinating, but he reckons that in the long term it is best to continue seeking the individual factors causing the rejuvenating effects so that they can be given to humans more easily. “Imagine if you had to be transfused with young blood all the time: It’s hard to imagine as a therapy. Who is going to be donating all this blood?” he asks."
• A September 29, 2014 Politico article about the Affordable Care Act's "hidden corners" includes issues with long-term care. According to the article, "The ACA didn’t fix one of the big unsolved problems in U.S. health care: how to finance long-term care for patients suffering from a disability or a chronic illness such as Alzheimer’s disease. A portion of the ACA (CLASS) that would have taken on a small piece of that challenge was scrapped because the numbers didn’t quite add up. But the ACA does contain several pilot programs aimed at finding ways to allow very frail and sick people to avoid nursing homes or institutions by having at-home care and social services. In addition, the health law will allow a group of hospices to test “concurrent care”—letting terminally ill people get hospice care without having to give up all their curative treatment at the same time, the usual condition for Medicare hospice."

• A September 30, 2014 SBS.com.au (Australia) interview with Harvard University geneticist Dr. David Sinclair explored the future of aging. According to Dr. Sinclair, "Doctors will prescribe medicines for a particular disease but, as a side effect, those medications will work to prevent dozens of others. As we get better at reversing aging it will be possible to take one medicine and within weeks feel and even look younger. Imagine going to a doctor to get a pill for diabetes, and this same medicine will prevent heart disease, Alzheimer's, cancer, and will give you more vitality too. This is easy in mice. Trying to do it in humans is now the challenge." Dr. David Sinclair is Co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging at Harvard Medical School. 
• FDA Approves NeuroGenetic Pharmaceuticals Application to Begin Clinical Trials for Its NGP 555 Compound to Treat and Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease [PR] (9/29/13)