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Dementia
LipiDiet.org was founded 1999 by a group of European scientists, who are deeply involved in dementia research, mainly Alzheimer’s disease, though the scope increased over time. What is dementia? Dementia is a group of diseases, which usually affect the elderly causing progressive decline in cognitive abilities. When one speaks about dementia, most people would think primarily of Alzheimer’s disease, because this is by far the most common cause of dementia. There are also some more rare forms of dementia, but they are currently not the topic of LipiDiet.org.
The problem with dementia is, that there is no cure available. There are some treatments, which are able to reduce the symptoms a bit, but the disease will continue and is eventually fatal.

A cure is needed
Since there is no cure and since we are scientist the task at hand is of course to find a therapy that really helps the people. All of us are working on pharmaceutical developments, or the basic science that is needed to develop drugs. It is common knowledge, that drugs carry some risks of unwanted side-effects; sometimes these are very minor, sometimes they are substantial. Although Alzheimer’s risk is a very serious disease and some side-effects of such a treatment would be tolerable if only the disease could be cured. But “curing” Alzheimer’s disease is not simple. So the neurodegeneration (that means that the nerve cells in the brain become severely damaged or die) cannot be simply reverted and nerve cells cannot be replaced like skin cells that simply grow again. Therefore, the very best chances of getting a working therapy for Alzheimer’s disease is to prevent the disease in the first place. Since, one cannot know who will get AD any prevention must be very safe, because people will be exposed to an anti-Alzheimer drug who would never suffer from the disease anyway. It also must be affordable, because prevention works only over time. After some heavy thinking, the LIPIDIET scientists came to the conclusion that the very best approach to this is to use molecules which are part of the natural human diet. Dietary molecules tend to be safe within reasonable limits and they are affordable, at least in western societies.

Fat is the path to follow
Fortunately, at the time when LipiDiet.org was founded a number of amazing discoveries were made leading to the conclusions, that lipids affect the very molecular processes, which in the end lead to Alzheimer’s disease. These initial findings were quickly followed by many more scientific discoveries giving, what is now established, a pretty clear picture that lipids are a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease.
Switching back to the original topic of finding a cure, the LIPIDIET scientist argued, that if lipids (like cholesterol) increase the risk for Alzheimer’s disease, then there should be other lipids which might be useful to treat, or even if one is very lucky, prevent the disease all together. The only problem now was to find out, which lipid(s) may do the job. There are an almost unlimited number of lipids, but it was clear from the very beginning that only few of them could fulfil all of the criteria necessary. To find out, on a sound scientific basis, which one of these is the best would take some very heavy researching. To find a fat, which cures Alzheimer’s disease is surely a big goal and the LIPIDIET consortiums aims were in fact more moderate. The main objectives were to identify the molecular mechanism that 1) links Alzheimer’s disease with lipids, 2) to identify the lipid, which, on a scientific basis, has the potential to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. 3) Then to verify this in vitro, 4) followed by verification in animal studies. 5) Finally, should all of this work first indications would be sought for in actual human studies. Considering that Alzheimer’s disease had been discovered a good 100 years ago and that there are thousands of scientists working on that topic, this still was very risky bunch of objectives.

Finding the lipid
As it turned out this research money, funded by the EU, was very well invested. You can read about the results in more detail on this web site and the links presented, but here is a short summary what happened. The LIPIDIET scientists together with their colleagues around the globe working in a similar direction either together or on related approaches soon found out, that they were on the right track. After some time, the most effective lipid was selected. This is a fatty acid, which is a very special part of the human diet. It is a specific omega-3-fatty acid, called the docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA in short. DHA is an important part of fish-oil and was already considered to be very healthy. It is an essential fatty acid, so the human body can not make its own DHA, one need to eat it (more on this in the DHA facts section). Typical sources include fish and brain. Indeed it turned out, that DHA reduces the production of the substance believed to cause Alzheimer’s disease (the amyloid) in vitro as well as in vivo. Then the molecular mechanisms appeared to surface. The amyloid turned out to be in fact a signalling molecule, which has an important function in the human body, it depresses cholesterol production and takes part in lipid homeostasis.