- guardian.co.uk, Thursday April 12 2001 18.00 BST
The woman, who has not been named, underwent the 11-hour operation last week at a hospital attached to the University of San Diego in California. She was discharged two days later, but it will be at least a month before scientists know whether the procedure has been effective.
The operation was masterminded by neurologist Mark Tuszynski and carried out by neurosurgeon Hoi Sang U, leaders of a team which has been working toward trying the technique in humans for 12 years. There is likely to be scepticism in the wider Alzheimer's research community at the value of such a radical approach.
"This approach is not targeting the disease itself," warned Declan McLoughlin, a lecturer in old age psychiatry at King's College London.
"Although there is some scientific rationale for doing it, you could say a lot of current work has superseded it," he said.
The procedure targets a thumbnail-sized region of the brain called the nucleus basalis of Meynert, which produces a substance called acetylcholine, critical in modulating thought and memory.
The San Diego team's approach is to take a sample of skin cells from the patient months before surgery and insert a gene in them which expresses a chemical called nerve growth factor (NGF).
These cells are multiplied in culture, tested to see that they are producing the right amount of NGF, and then injected into the nucleus basalis with a fine needle put through a hole in the patient's skull.
Critics say drugs already exist which target the lack of acetylcholine in the brain of Alzheimer's patients.
• Birth defects in babies of women who take medicine for epilepsy while they are pregnant are caused by drugs and not by epilepsy, according to new research reported in the US, writes Sarah Boseley. The study, in the New England Journal of Medicine today, claims the idea that the genetic abnormalities which cause the epilepsy are then passed on to the foetus, is wrong.
