How can light therapy help with Alzheimer’s?

Despite Alzheimer’s disease affecting nearly 6.2 million older Americans, a highly effective treatment is yet to be discovered.

There has been decades of research focused on the likes of high-tech drugs, diets and even crossword puzzles, however, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, believe they have found a new treatment they hope will be highly effective.

The researchers have been awarded a five year grant by the National of Institutes of Health for the development of the new treatment.

This new treatment will see researchers experiment with light, and a combination of light therapies.

The researchers will test whether exposing patients to a combination of light therapies will slow Alzheimer’s debilitating effects.

One of the light therapies will use pulses of light, that are designed to enhance cognition-boosting electrical brain waves, whilst another is targeted to help patients sleep better. 

For it’s first year, the project will receive $792,000.

Mariana Figueiro, director of the light health research centre, says: “Light can be powerful but often overlooked health factor.

“We hope to harness the power of light to relieve the suffering that millions of Alzheimer’s disease patients and their loved ones experience every day.”

As Alzheimer’s is neurodegenerative disorder, which primarily damages the brain’s memory centres, symptoms will usually appear in individuals over 65-years-old.

However, recent research of Dr Figueiro’s lab and others have highlighted the idea that light may be an “effective tool” for combating the degenerative factors of Alzheimer’s.

In this project , the research team plan to test whether flashing pulses of light at a frequency of 40 times per second, can not only increase “gamma” wave of electrical activity in the brains of patients but also counteract issues associated with Alzheimer’s.

Whilst doing this, the team will also look at whether a combination of the light pulses and light therapy that is designed to reset a patient’s sleep-wake cycle could also help.

At first, the study will involve dozens of patients at Mount Sinai, who have been diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, or mild cognitive impairment.

The light pulses will be made through a custom-made device developed at the LHRC.

The results will be compared with those obtained from age matched control subjects.

Learning and memory is associated with gamma brain wave activity. Human studies have suggested that the activity is reduced in Alzheimer’s patients.

Previous studies on mice that were genetically modified to mimic certain aspects of Alzheimer’s showed that flashing light at 40 Hz enhanced gamma activity while reducing neural cell death and the accumulation of beta-amyloid, which is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.

To examine what role that sleep-wake cycles my have in this process, the team will pose patients to daily, high doses of daytime light, which are designed to help patients sleep better.

An estimated 40 per cent of Alzheimer’s patients experience sleep related issues, which include agitation and daytime sleepiness.

Previous studies that have uses light therapies to treat these symptoms have had mixed results.

In this study, the sleep-wake cycle light will be delivered by either the same custom-made device for the flashing lights or a different one.

This will allow for well-defined periods of constant daily exposure.

Its effectiveness on the sleep and cognitive issues associated with Alzheimer’s will be tested alone and in combination with the 40-Hz pulses.

Dr Figueiro says: “Our sleep-wake cycles play a critical role in brain health.

“By using a rigorous, two-pronged approach to light therapy it is possible that we could push the brains of Alzheimer’s patients into a healthier state.”