Lithium shows promise in Alzheimer's study

What happened

Researchers at Harvard Medical School reported Wednesday that the depletion of lithium in the brain appears to play a significant role in the development of Alzheimer's disease. The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, open up possibilities for new treatments using small amounts of the common metal, found in several foods and drinking water.

Who said what

The Harvard study could be the "holy grail that prevents and even reverses Alzheimer's," The Boston Globe said. Feeding a small dose of lithium orotate to lithium-deprived "aging mice" with fading memories "actually reverted their memory to the young adult, six-month level," study leader Bruce Yankner, a professor of genetics and neurology, told The Washington Post. "It seems to somehow turn back the clock," he told the Globe.

Yankner's team found that lithium was the only trace metal significantly depleted in the brains of people with early-stage memory loss, bolstering previous studies that tied lithium to lower dementia rates. Genetics and lifestyle also play a role in Alzheimer's, said MIT neuroscientist Li-Huei Tsai, but Yankner's "very exciting" study "provides a very important piece of the puzzle."

What next?

"The obvious impact is that because lithium orotate is dirt cheap, hopefully we will get rigorous, randomized trials testing this very, very quickly," Matt Kaeberlein, a University of Washington expert on the biology of aging, told the Post. Yankner said that in his lab, the Trump administration's freeze on federal funding to Harvard "will significantly limit our progress going forward."

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