With the number of dementia patients now at some 26 million and expected to quadruple by 2050, Alzheimer’s disease, the leading cause of dementia, continues to be the focus of intense study around the world. Nevertheless, a cure continues to elude scientists, as research continually churns up, inspires hope with, and then slowly inters seemingly endless causes, correlations, diagnostic methods, and possible cures. A roundup of research papers published during a single, one-month period in 2014 yielded far-ranging and disparate results. Tissue degeneration in two regions of the eye, as detected by sophisticated imaging techniques, may reveal early stage Alzheimer’s disease. Misfolded protein fragments, which lead to amyloid clumps that have been previously associated with Alzheimer’s disease, can now be detected in cerebrospinal fluid. A new kind of vibrating scanner, whose motion is like that of a sewing machine needle, is giving scientists a better look at oligomers, proteins thought to cause Alzheimer’s disease. Mitochondrial defects observed in Alzheimer’s and other diseases may now be treatable. Eye behavior during reading, including fixation on new information and slower eye movements, may be an early indication of Alzheimer’s disease.

1. With which aspect of Alzheimer’s disease do MOST papers mentioned in this passage deal?

(A) Prevalence
(B) Diagnosis
(C) Progression
(D) Treatment
(E) Causes


2. The passage suggests all of the following ideas about Alzheimer’s disease EXCEPT:

(A) a sense of urgency is implicit in all new and ongoing research into the disease.
(B) the history of Alzheimer’s disease is littered with the corpses of old ideas.
(C) some research efforts in the past have focused on amyloid clumps.
(D) there may be multiple observable indicators of the early stage disease.
(E) causes and manifestations of the disease are most likely various and multiple.


3. It can be inferred from the passage that at least some Alzheimer’s research

(A) is now focusing on specific proteins rather than amyloid clumps.
(B) has uncovered methods for treating some aspects of the disease.
(C) has determined that the human eye is the primary site of diagnosis.
(D) has repudiated the usefulness of information gathered from misfolded protein fragments.
(E) centers on comparisons between cellular activity and everyday machines.