I only recently read David Shenk's great popular science book from 2001, The Forgetting, which is a "biography" of Alzheimer's disease. It tells its story on many levels, from the personal sufferings of caregivers and patients to the impacts on society as a whole. A main method of Shenk is his interviews with patients at different stages of the disease, which he mixes with vivid accounts of how the disease has ravaged people throughout history (he primarily describes the illnesses of Emerson and Swift). He also discusses the ethics and politics of research and (potential) treatments, and gives a summary of the scientific development from Alois Alzheimer's discoveries in the early 20th century to the "latest" reports from conferences in the beginning of this century.

Unfortunately, although the book is more than 10 years old, the scientific part is not particularly out-of-date. Although tens of thousands scientific papers have been published on Alzheimer's since the book was written, there have been few major breakthroughs. In particular, there is still no cure for the disease, despite the hopefulness that characterized the field on the time of Shenk's writing, when the first anti-amyloid treatments were being tested in humans. More than ten years later, and after several failed drug trials, we are slightly disillusioned. I suspect that Shenk would have emphasized even more the importance of acceptance, coping, and disease rehabilitation, if he had written the book today. However, a new generation of trials are now underway, aimed specifically at people with strong genetic risk factors. In a few years we will have much better data to determine if these classes of drugs - and with them the amyloid research paradigm - are successful at halting Alzheimer's disease.

War breaks the soldier and even the survivor is marked for life. This ancient theme echoes through history, from the Odyssey to the present.

After World War I, when millions of young men returned home with psychological disabilities, there was a boom in interest about the effects of war on the minds of the survivors. In Germany, the prominent neurologist Max Nonne treated patients with "hysteria" using hypnosis, as seen in this marveluous film, with Nonne as a medical demigod controlling a poor young veteran.

In our days, the interest is again rising about the effects of war on the brain of the survivors. Military veterans are known to at high risk for anxiety, memory problems, and perhaps even dementia. These issues were brought into focus after the Gulf War, when thousands of soldiers may have been exposed to nerve agents and toxic gases from the burning fields. We do not know exactly what happened in Iraq during that time, but american soldiers who were potentially exposed to nerve agents or oil well fires have increased risk for brain cancer, but their risk for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's or ALS, are not generally increased according to available data.

Recently, there has been a shift in focus from harmful exposure to toxins, towards the risk for veterans to develop PTSD and progressive cognitive problems, even dementia. It should come as no surprise that people who participate in warfare are at increased risk for psychiatric problems, whether it is called "hysteria" or PTSD, but the increased risk for dementia may be a (at least partly) separate phenomenon, which is likely related to the presence of traumatic brain injury.

The link between traumatic brain injury and accumulation of toxic proteins, as seen in many neurodegenerative diseases, is definitely a "hot topic" of research. This converges, by the way, with research on hockey players and american football players, who may experience similar problems, leading to increased dementia risk. And this is of course true also for boxing and other martial arts with frequent blows to the head.