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SfN: Good news at last

This week I've learnt about Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS and Huntington's. Then there was autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. I've blogged on suicide and child abuse. So it's some relief to end the conference blog with a poster that has the excellent title of "No disease in the brain of a 115-year-old woman".

Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper pledged to donate to her body to medical research in 1972. Almost 30 years later, at the age of 111, she wondered whether medical research still had any interest in her body. So she called the University of Groningen, near where she lived in the Netherlands.

Gert Holstege, a neurosurgeon at the university, released that van Andel-Schipper presented a rare opportunity. He popped round and they chatted about politics and van Andel-Schipper's favourite soccer team, Ajax. She appeared totally alert. Cognitive tests later placed her in the range of performance associated with a 50-70 year-old. So when she died of cancer at 115, Holstege was able to study her brain to answer an intriguing but hard to answer question: do humans inevitably develop some form of brain disease as they age?

Van Andel-Schipper's brain tells us that the answer is no, at least up to age 115. Her brain was almost totally undamaged. In fact she was in remarkably good shape overall, says Holstege, and could have lived for several moer years if she hadn't developed cancer.


Posted by Jim Giles on October 18, 2006 06:40 PM |

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Comments

Thank you so much for this positive and uplifting news item! It is so seldom that one can read good news about aging brains.

I guess there is some hope after all for those of us who fear the effects of aging in our minds.

Best regards,

Claudia

Posted by: Claudia Guajardo-Yeo | October 19, 2006 08:19 PM

This is undoubtedly an optimistic news. But we have to remember that though aging influences neural degeneration , it is not that every single individual suffers to the extent of being in a neural disorder due to aging. Genes also play a critical role and may be in case of this individual, she never had any issue to trigger bipolar or schizophrenia.So as per Darwin, she is one of the 'fittest' individual to survive well.
cheers,
debolina

Posted by: Debolina Guha Majumdar | June 27, 2007 08:28 PM

For years I argued that there is no "brain aging" but a number of distinct diseases occuring mainly in the old, mostly on a stochastic basis. An early version : FONCIN J.-F. : Etude anatomopathologique et ultrastructurale de divers processus de vieillissement cérébral. Rev. EEG Neurophysiol. 1980 10 n°3, 215-227. - an invited lecture to an EEG meeting on "brain aging", where I proceeded to demolish this very idea. The super -centenarian without brain damage confirms my opinion.

Posted by: Jean-François Foncin | November 6, 2007 09:37 PM

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