Thousands of researchers are converging in Boston to fight Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.
The Alzheimer's Association is holding a major international research conference.
The researchers, and their supporters at the association, are trying to push Congress to increase dementia research funding by at least $100 million.
Some of the researchers at the conference are talking about efforts to develop new Alzheimer's drugs. Corinne Augelli-Szafran, for example, talked at the conference about efforts to attack gamma-secretase, a chemical that might help another substance, beta amyloid, gum up brain cells.
Dorene Rentz talked about efforts to compare results from two brain scans — one showing how the brain uses sugar, and another that measures the amount of beta amyloid slime fouling the brain — with results on traditional memory tests.
The researchers found that people with worse memory performance tended to have more beta amyloid slime, and had brains that were slower to use sugar.
The research suggests that people who do poorly both on memory tests and the brain scans might be at higher risk for developing Alzheimer's disease, the association said in a summary of conference events.