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VOA慢速英语2012 SCIENCE IN THE NEWS - A Possible Blood Test for Alzheimer’s Disease

时间:2012-03-13 03:31:54

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SCIENCE IN THE NEWS - A Possible Blood Test for Alzheimer’s Disease 

JUNE SIMMS: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I’m June Simms.

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: And I’m Shirley Griffith. Today we tell about Alzheimer’s disease. More than a century after its discovery, Alzheimer’s disease is still destroying people’s brains. There is no known cure. But research may offer hope for the future.
(MUSIC)
JUNE SIMMS: Alzheimer’s disease affects memory and personality - the qualities that make people individuals. The disease robs their ability to perform simple activities like putting on clothing or even swallowing. People with the condition begin to forget simple things, like where they left the key to their car. As time passes, they forget more and more. They may forget what a key is used for.
Victims of Alzheimer’s can forget the names of their husbands, wives or children. Then they forget who they are. Finally, they remember almost nothing. It is as if their brains die before the other parts of the body.
Alzheimer’s patients do die from its effects or conditions linked to it. But death may not come for many years.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: An estimated thirty million people around the world have Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s affects people of all races equally. Women are more likely to develop the disease than men. This is partly because women generally live longer than men.
The disease generally develops differently in each person. Yet some early signs of the disease are common. The victims may not recognize changes in themselves. Or they may struggle to hide them.
JUNE SIMMS: Media reports tell about older adults found walking far from their homes. They do not know where they are or where they came from. These people often are suffering from Alzheimer’s.
Victims of the disease can become angry and violent as the ability to think and remember decreases. They sometimes shout and move with no apparent purpose or goal. Or they may become very quiet.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Probably the most-common early sign of Alzheimer’s is short-term memory loss. People with the disease cannot remember something that happened yesterday, for example. Also, they have increasing difficulty learning and storing new information. Slowly, thinking becomes much more difficult. The victims cannot understand a joke, or cannot cook a meal, or perform simple work.
Another sign is difficulty solving simple problems. Alzheimer’s patients might not know what to do if they see food burning. They also may have trouble following directions or finding their way to places they have known all their lives.
Another sign is struggling to find the right words to express thoughts or understand what is being discussed. People with Alzheimer’s seem to change. Quiet people may become noisy and aggressive. They may easily become angry and lose their ability to trust others.
(MUSIC)
JUNE SIMMS: Alzheimer’s disease normally affects people more than sixty-five years old. But rare cases have been discovered in people younger than fifty.
Alzheimer’s is identified in only about two percent of people who are sixty-five. But the risk increases to about twenty percent by age eighty. By eighty-five or ninety, half of all people are found to have some signs of the disease.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: About five million people in the United States have Alzheimer’s. That number is expected to more than double by the year twenty fifty as the number of older Americans increases. The Alzheimer’s Association says medicines approved for use are effective in half the patients who take them. Among those fifty percent, the drugs are effective for six to twelve months.
JUNE SIMMS: For years, scientists have been attempting to learn who may develop Alzheimer’s. If the condition could be identified before its worst signs appear, people might get at least temporary medical help.
The most widely-held belief about the cause of Alzheimer’s is that a protein - called beta-amyloid - builds up in patients’ brains. It has also been found in the spinal1 fluid of Alzheimer’s patients. Large amounts of this protein may destroy a person’s ability to think.
But some scientists question whether beta-amyloid causes the disease. They think that the protein build-up may result from it. Still, most researchers say thick tangles2 or plaques3 of the protein are responsible for the condition. Plaques are unusual clusters, or groups, of proteins. The researchers say beta-amyloid destroys communication links in the brain.
(MUSIC)
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Among older people, Alzheimer’s is the most-common form of dementia - the loss of abilities needed to have a normal life. Other mental conditions may seem like Alzheimer’s. Those conditions need medical treatment that is different from treatment for Alzheimer’s. A correct diagnosis4, or identification, is important.
The best way to diagnose the disease has been a medical examination of the brain after a person dies. Doctors say methods to test the living have presented problems, like high costs. One such method is an MRI or magnetic resonance5 imaging. Another imaging test is Positron Emission6 Tomography, also known as PET. It makes scans or pictures that doctors can study.
JUNE SIMMS: Researchers know that people’s brains start changing ten to fifteen years before they show signs of Alzheimer’s disease. That is why they are exploring ways to test people early so they can delay, or someday even stop, the progress of the disease.
Madhav Thambisetty is with the National Institutes of Aging, part of America’s National Institutes of Health. Dr. Thambisetty led a study that used a blood test to measure levels of beta-amyloid in the brain. The test could be given to seemingly healthy people before any signs – or symptoms - of Alzheimer’s appear.
DR. MADHAV THAMBISETTY: “We’re looking for blood proteins that might be indicative of the extent of brain damage that we know occurs very early on in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.”
In the study, researchers studied blood samples from fifty-seven older volunteers who had no symptoms of Alzheimer’s. They also used PET scans to measure the amyloid protein. They found that volunteers with high blood levels of amyloid had much higher levels of it in the part of the brain that controls memory. Dr. Thambisetty found the results interesting.
DR. MADHAV THAMBISETTY: “Recent studies suggest that the deposition7 of amyloid might happen several years before symptoms of memory impairment begin in somebody with Alzheimer’s disease.”
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Another test for the disease uses a new kind of brain scan to identify protein in the brain. In January, the United States Food and Drug Administration held hearings about a special radioactive dye that connects to the protein. The special dye can be seen on PET scans.
People who were near the end of their lives agreed to have both the brain scan and an autopsy8 performed after they died. An autopsy is a medical examination of the body after someone dies. The researchers reported that in almost all of the people, the scan results were nearly the same as the autopsy results.
JUNE SIMMS: Neil Buckholtz is chief of the Dementias of Aging Branch at the National Institute on Aging. He says early intervention9 is important in the fight against the disease.
NEIL BUCKHOLTZ: “How these changes progress over time, so that we’ll be able to target those for drug intervention, and again, eventually we’ll be able to slow the progression and, hopefully, stop the disease in its tracks.”
The United States recently announced new steps for fighting Alzheimer’s disease. Last month, the government made fifty-million dollars immediately available for research on the disease. It also announced plans to increase research spending by eighty million dollars in the next fiscal10 year, which begins in October.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: In nineteen six, a German doctor – Alois Alzheimer – described a dementia patient whose brain was examined in an autopsy. Her brain had sticky structures and nerve cells that appeared to be mixed together. Today, researchers are still working to uncover the causes of, and treatments for, this stubborn medical mystery.
(MUSIC)
JUNE SIMMS: This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Christopher Cruise, with reporting by Carol Pearson.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: I’m Shirley Griffith with June Simms, who was also our producer. 

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点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 spinal KFczS     
adj.针的,尖刺的,尖刺状突起的;adj.脊骨的,脊髓的
参考例句:
  • After three days in Japan,the spinal column becomes extraordinarily flexible.在日本三天,就已经使脊椎骨变得富有弹性了。
  • Your spinal column is made up of 24 movable vertebrae.你的脊柱由24个活动的脊椎骨构成。
2 tangles 10e8ecf716bf751c5077f8b603b10006     
(使)缠结, (使)乱作一团( tangle的第三人称单数 )
参考例句:
  • Long hair tangles easily. 长头发容易打结。
  • Tangles like this still interrupted their intercourse. 像这类纠缠不清的误会仍然妨碍着他们的交情。
3 plaques cc23efd076b2c24f7ab7a88b7c458b4f     
(纪念性的)匾牌( plaque的名词复数 ); 纪念匾; 牙斑; 空斑
参考例句:
  • Primary plaques were detectable in 16 to 20 hours. 在16到20小时内可查出原发溶斑。
  • The gondoliers wore green and white livery and silver plaques on their chests. 船夫们穿着白绿两色的制服,胸前别着银质徽章。
4 diagnosis GvPxC     
n.诊断,诊断结果,调查分析,判断
参考例句:
  • His symptoms gave no obvious pointer to a possible diagnosis.他的症状无法作出明确的诊断。
  • The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做一次彻底的调查分析。
5 resonance hBazC     
n.洪亮;共鸣;共振
参考例句:
  • Playing the piano sets up resonance in those glass ornaments.一弹钢琴那些玻璃饰物就会产生共振。
  • The areas under the two resonance envelopes are unequal.两个共振峰下面的面积是不相等的。
6 emission vjnz4     
n.发出物,散发物;发出,散发
参考例句:
  • Rigorous measures will be taken to reduce the total pollutant emission.采取严格有力措施,降低污染物排放总量。
  • Finally,the way to effectively control particulate emission is pointed out.最后,指出有效降低颗粒排放的方向。
7 deposition MwOx4     
n.免职,罢官;作证;沉淀;沉淀物
参考例句:
  • It was this issue which led to the deposition of the king.正是这件事导致了国王被废黜。
  • This leads to calcium deposition in the blood-vessels.这导致钙在血管中沉积。
8 autopsy xuVzm     
n.尸体解剖;尸检
参考例句:
  • They're carrying out an autopsy on the victim.他们正在给受害者验尸。
  • A hemorrhagic gut was the predominant lesion at autopsy.尸检的主要发现是肠出血。
9 intervention e5sxZ     
n.介入,干涉,干预
参考例句:
  • The government's intervention in this dispute will not help.政府对这场争论的干预不会起作用。
  • Many people felt he would be hostile to the idea of foreign intervention.许多人觉得他会反对外来干预。
10 fiscal agbzf     
adj.财政的,会计的,国库的,国库岁入的
参考例句:
  • The increase of taxation is an important fiscal policy.增税是一项重要的财政政策。
  • The government has two basic strategies of fiscal policy available.政府有两个可行的财政政策基本战略。

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