Alzheimer’s treatments better when combined

? Alzheimer’s disease may be better treated with a cocktail of therapies that limit production of plaque that impairs the brain rather than with one treatment alone, a study in mice suggests.

The combination approach preserved memory with few side effects, something individual treatment methods haven’t been able to do as well, researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said in a report published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

There’s no cure yet for Alzheimer’s, a disease that attacks the brain and causes memory loss that can devolve into severe cognitive decline. It affects an estimated 30 million people worldwide and was the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States in 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.