Brain health and Africa’s future
Peer-Reviewed Publication
In honor of Alzheimer's Awareness Month, we’re exploring the science and stories surrounding Alzheimer’s disease.
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 27-Oct-2025 20:11 ET (28-Oct-2025 00:11 GMT/UTC)
Wits Professor Stephen Tollman has joined the Africa Task Force on Brain Health, part of the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative. With dementia set to affect over one million South Africans, the new “6x5 Plan” aims to strengthen brain health systems, harness digital tools, and drive advocacy across Africa.
Problems with the brain’s waste clearance system could underlie many cases of dementia and help explain why poor sleep patterns and cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure increase the risk of dementia.
A study led by researchers at the University of Cambridge found that impaired movement of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) – the clear liquid that cushions and cleans the brain – predicted risk of dementia later in life among 40,000 adults recruited to the UK Biobank. Their findings are published today in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.
For decades, scientists have thought they understood the biochemical machinery that causes asthma—inflammation in the lungs that constricts airways and makes it hard to breathe. But researchers from Case Western Reserve University think "leukotrienes"—chemicals that get released from white blood cells when something irritates your lungs or you inhale an allergen—may not be the bad actors after all.
A new review in Molecular Biomedicine reveals how intricate regulation of cholesterol metabolism connects cellular lipid homeostasis to diseases such as atherosclerosis, fatty liver, and Alzheimer's disease—and explores next-generation therapeutic strategies including gene editing, RNA drugs, and gut microbiota modulation.