EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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Head vs. heart: Egypt's Gaza dilemma

The hostilities threatening to escalate into all-out war between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza concern the two antagonists first and foremost, but the course the fighting takes is likely to be equally consequential for Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi – and for his relations with the United States.

Egypt’s Islamist president finds himself pulled in competing directions by the head and the heart. The fighting this week – the result of heavy Israeli retaliation for escalating rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel – has the Islamist Mr. Morsi in a tight spot: caught between his co-religionists across the border in Gaza, on one side, and Washington, upon which a struggling Egypt relies for economic and military assistance, on the other.

For some Middle East analysts, this could be a moment for Morsi to emerge and establish himself as a leader to be reckoned with in the unstable and leaderless post-Awakening Arab world. But successfully maneuvering this moment will take time. And with Israeli soldiers amassing on Gaza’s border, the analysts add, it’s unclear whether Morsi will have the chance to even take the leadership test the situation presents.

IN PICTURES: Gaza: battleground and daily life under Hamas' rule

“Morsi is definitely between the proverbial rock and hard place, but if he can pull together the elements to convince Hamas to stop the rockets … and he can defuse this situation, then I think he can emerge as a leader in the region,” says Aaron David Miller, a Middle East scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. “But he needs time and space to try to do it, and I’m not sure the Israelis are going to allow him that time.”

The sudden flare-up involving Gaza and its Islamist leaders is also testing US influence in a region where the Arab Awakening has deposed a number of autocratic leaders more disposed to upholding a US-led system of security and stability – including former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak – in favor of Islamist-led governments.

Morsi hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, as does Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization that governs Gaza. The rockets crashing into southern Israel have been lobbed by a collection of militant Islamist groups operating in Gaza, including some aligned with Iran. But after the Israelis launched retaliatory air strikes, including a strike that killed the Hamas military leader, Ahmed Jabari, Hamas has continued the barrage of rocket fire into Israel and the fighting has largely boiled down to a battle between Israel and Hamas.

Morsi has made his sympathies clear on Egyptian television, lamenting the spilling of Palestinian blood and railing against what he calls the Israeli “aggression.” But privately he is apparently sounding more amenable to trying to convince Hamas to stand down, perhaps by accepting a cease-fire. Morsi has spoken by phone with President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton several times this week, US officials say.

This is where Morsi’s head comes in. Egypt depends on the US for some $1.5 billion in annual assistance, not to mention Washington’s advocacy before international financial institutions – including the International Monetary Fund, where Egypt currently has a $4.5 billion loan under consideration.

Egypt’s relations with the US have not sailed through the stormy waters of the Egyptian revolution unscathed. The uncertainty and growing mistrust that now characterize what was once the solid core of US relations with the region were captured by Obama’s comment in an interview in September: “I don’t think we would consider [Egypt] an ally,” the president said, “but we don’t consider them an enemy,” either.

The turbulence has led some analysts to wonder if Morsi might be willing to jeopardize US assistance in order to pursue pro-Islamist – and more overtly anti-Israeli – policies. This week’s deadly violence between Israel and Hamas has led to some speculation that Morsi, who recalled Egypt’s ambassador to Israel, might be willing to take steps jeopardizing the Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel.

But experts like Mr. Miller point out that Egypt’s economic stability is linked to Camp David, since receipt of the substantial US aid, and favorable treatment with international financial institutions, are both products of the 1979 accords.

Without a treaty, there’s no special relationship with the US – whether or not it’s as an ally.

Morsi might take a number of steps to convince Hamas to pull back. He could agree to open the Egypt-Gaza border (this possibility is why Israel is pressing Egypt to block any passage of weapons, including replacement rocket launch pads, across its border) and he could work with Saudi Arabia and other patron states to up their financial assistance to Gaza, Miller says.

Morsi might then come out of the Gaza crisis with a much shinier image – the question now may be whether Israel is willing to hold back to see if Egypt’s Islamist leader is capable of this role.

IN PICTURES: Gaza: battleground and daily life under Hamas' rule

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Japan set for polls, no clear winner likely

TOKYO (AP) — Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was poised to dissolve Japan's parliament Friday, setting the stage for elections next month that will likely result in a weak coalition government with differing policies on how to fix the country's myriad problems.

Polls show that nearly half of the electorate is undecided on which party to support but it's clear that the ruling Democrats — in power for the last three years — are very likely to lose. Media reports say the elections will be held on Dec. 16.

Although the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, which led Japan for most of the post-World War II era, would win the most seats in the 480-seat lower house it will fall far short of a majority, according to the polls.

With no party a clear winner, Japan will end up with a coalition government made up of parties with differing policies and priorities. This could hinder decision-making as Japan wrestles with a two-decade economic slump, clean-up from last year's nuclear disaster, growing national debt and a rapidly aging population — not to mention a festering territorial dispute with China that is hurting business ties with its biggest trading partner.

"It's unlikely that the election will result in a clear mandate for anybody," said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University. "So in that sense, there's still going to be a lot of muddling through."

Japan must also decide whether it will follow through with plans to phase out nuclear power by 2040 — a move that many in the LDP oppose.

In a sudden turn of events, Noda abruptly said Wednesday in a one-on-one debate with LDP chief Shinzo Abe that he would dissolve parliament Friday if the opposition would agree to key reforms, including shrinking the size of parliament.

Abe, who said his party would go along with the measures, could get a second stab at being prime minister after his one-year stint in 2006-2007 if the LDP wins the most seats in the election. He would become Japan's seventh prime minister in seven years.

A staunch nationalist, Abe has taken a strong stance against China in the dispute over a cluster of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea controlled by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan. Abe suddenly quit as prime minister in 2007, citing health problems that he says are no longer an issue.

Noda's Democratic Party of Japan won a landslide victory in 2009 elections amid high hopes for change, ousting the conservative, business-friendly LDP, which had ruled Japan nearly continuously since 1955.

But those hopes have been dashed amid widespread disgust with the DPJ's failure to keep campaign promises and the government's handling of the Fukushima nuclear crisis triggered by the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami.

Voters are also unhappy with Noda's centerpiece achievement during his nearly 15 months in office: passing legislation to double the nation's 5 percent sales tax by 2015 — a move he says is necessary to meet growing social security costs as the country grays.

Recent polls show about 25-30 percent of voters back the LDP, while support for the DPJ is in the low teens. With scattered support for a few other parties, that leaves nearly half of the public undecided, meaning the outcome is still quite unclear.

"I really don't know who to vote for," said 62-year-old taxi driver Tetsuo Suzuki. "I voted for the DPJ in the last election, but they couldn't seem to get things done. I don't really want to go back to the LDP, either."

"Japan doesn't seem as perky as it used to be," he said, ticking off the economy and territorial dispute with China as the two most pressing issues. "We want a strong leader who won't bend his principles."

Tapping into that voter dismay, outspoken leaders in the two biggest cities in Japan have decided to form their own national political parties, but they may not have enough time to get organized for the election.

The nationalistic governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara — who stirred up the flap with China by saying the Tokyo government would buy and develop the disputed islands called Senkaku by Japan and Diaoyu by China — resigned recently to create the Sunrise Party.

Toru Hashimoto, the brash, young mayor of Osaka, is working to draw up candidates for the newly formed Japan Restoration Party, although he said he himself will not run in the elections. Recent polls show his party has support in the 5 percent range.

The two men are reportedly in discussions to merge their parties and form a so-called "third force" to counter the LDP and DPJ, but it appears they are having difficulty reconciling some of their differing policy views, including on nuclear power.

Japan is going through a messy period of political transition with its merry-go-round of prime ministers and the emergence of various parties to challenge the long-dominant LDP, experts say.

"The era of one-party dominance is clearly over and behind us," said the professor, Nakano. "We know what we are transiting from, but we don't know where we are going."

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Andre 3000 isn't in a rush to record new album

NEW YORK (AP) — In order to capture his best version of Jimi Hendrix for an upcoming biopic, Andre 3000 said he had to think of him as a regular dude and not a rock star.

"I didn't look at him as an icon because when you're in it, you don't know you're an icon. You don't know you're an icon until another people say you're an icon," the 37-year-old said in an interview Tuesday.

"So I had to take it as a person, you know what I mean? And I just tried to say, 'Well, what would Jimi want people to know that they can't get off of YouTube?' And that's how I approached it," he said.

Hendrix died at age 27 in 1970. He was ranked No. 1 on Rolling Stone magazine's greatest guitarists of all-time list. His band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, is known for iconic albums such as "Electric Ladyland" and "Are You Experienced."

"All Is by My Side," which focuses on the early days of Hendrix's career, will be released next year. Andre 3000 is excited to see the film, which he's finished shooting in Ireland. He believes the public "will be pleased."

Andre 3000, one-half of OutKast with Big Boi, has been out of the music scene in recent years, although he's been featured on songs by Beyonce, Frank Ocean, Rick Ross, Ke$ha and Young Jeezy.

OutKast's 2006 platinum-selling album, "Idlewild," which accompanied a film of the same name starring the duo, was their last album. Their 11-time platinum "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" won the 2004 Grammy Award for album of the year.

Big Boi, who released a solo album two years ago to welcoming reviews, will release a new solo disc, "Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors," next month.

But Andre 3000 isn't in a rush to record an album.

"Some days I feel like I'll do it, some days I don't. Some days I feel like I don't need to, some days I feel like I want to do it before I die. So, I don't know where to fall. I am just hoping one day I get that inspiration," he said at an event for Gillette's eMO'gency Styler Tour, which supports men's health and prostate cancer programs. The tour kicked off in New York, with stops scheduled in Chicago and Houston.

"It's a feeling for me. Like, I can't just throw out an album to be rapping," he said. "And I don't even know if it will be rap. I don't even know what it will be."

However, he could find the inspiration and complete an album in just a few days: "It could be a rush situation. Like if I feel that feeling and I record an album in three days and I'm like, 'This is what I want to say right now' — that can happen, too."

He also says he's constantly writing songs.

"I write all the time. ... I actually stopped typing it in my phone because like a cloud is basically reading every thought that I have and I don't like that," he said. "So I went back to my paper and started writing."

He's not sure fans want a new OutKast album for the right reasons.

"Man, we've had a great ride. ... Like when we got into it when we were high school kids and we just wanted to do something fun and push it, and if it's not that then why do it?" he said.

"I'm not the type that prescribes to nostalgia, and most people say they want an OutKast album because they used to love it. Y'all don't even know if y'all still love it. You just know you used to love it. But you may not like it now, who knows?"

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Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/musicmesfin

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Diabetes rates rocket in Oklahoma, South

NEW YORK (AP) — The nation's diabetes problem is getting worse, and the biggest jump over 15 years was in Oklahoma, according to a new federal report issued Thursday.

The diabetes rate in Oklahoma more than tripled, and Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama also saw dramatic increases since 1995, the study showed.

The South's growing weight problem is the main explanation, said Linda Geiss, lead author of the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.

"The rise in diabetes has really gone hand in hand with the rise in obesity," she said.

Bolstering the numbers is the fact that more people with diabetes are living longer because better treatments are available.

The disease exploded in the United States in the last 50 years, with the vast majority from obesity-related Type 2 diabetes. In 1958, fewer than 1 in 100 Americans had been diagnosed with diabetes. In 2010, it was about 1 in 14.

Most of the increase has happened since 1990.

Diabetes is a disease in which the body has trouble processing sugar; it's the nation's seventh leading cause of death. Complications include poor circulation, heart and kidney problems and nerve damage.

The new study is the CDC's first in more than a decade to look at how the nationwide boom has played out in different states.

It's based on telephone surveys of at least 1,000 adults in each state in 1995 and 2010. Participants were asked if a doctor had ever told them they have diabetes.

Not surprisingly, Mississippi — the state with the largest proportion of residents who are obese — has the highest diabetes rate. Nearly 12 percent of Mississippians say they have diabetes, compared to the national average of 7 percent.

But the most dramatic increases in diabetes occurred largely elsewhere in the South and in the Southwest, where rates tripled or more than doubled. Oklahoma's rate rose to about 10 percent, Kentucky went to more than 9 percent, Georgia to 10 percent and Alabama surpassed 11 percent.

An official with Oklahoma State Department of Health said the solution is healthier eating, more exercise and no smoking.

"And that's it in a nutshell," said Rita Reeves, diabetes prevention coordinator.

Several Northern states saw rates more than double, too, including Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Maine.

The study was published in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

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Associated Press writer Ken Miller in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

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Online:

CDC report: http://tinyurl.com/cdcdiabetesreport

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Hamas aims rockets at Israeli heartland

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinian militants targeted densely populated Tel Aviv in Israel's heartland with rockets for the first time Thursday, part of an unprecedented barrage that threatened to provoke an Israeli ground assault on Gaza. Three Israelis were killed in a separate rocket attack in southern Israel.

Air raid sirens wailed and panicked residents ran for cover in Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial and cultural capital. Israel responded by moving troops and heavy weapons toward Gaza and authorizing the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists.

There was no word on where the two rockets aimed at Tel Aviv landed, raising the possibility they fell into the Mediterranean. A third rocket landed in an open area on the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv.

The fighting, the heaviest in four years, came after Israel launched a ferocious air assault Wednesday to stop repeated rocket fire from Gaza. The powerful Hamas military chief was killed in that strike, and another 18 Palestinians have died over two days, including five children. Some 100 Palestinians have been wounded.

Israeli warplanes struck dozens of Hamas-linked targets in Gaza on Thursday, sending loud booms echoing across the narrow Mediterranean coastal strip at regular intervals, followed by gray columns of smoke. After nightfall, several explosions shook Gaza City several minutes apart, a sign the strikes were not letting up, and the military said the targets were about 70 underground rocket-launching sites.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army was hitting Hamas hard with what he called surgical strikes, and warned of a "significant widening" of the Gaza operation. Israel will "continue to take whatever action is necessary to defend our people," said Netanyahu, who is up for re-election in January.

There were mounting signs of a ground operation. At least 12 trucks were seen transporting tanks and armored personnel carriers toward Gaza late Thursday, and a number of buses carrying soldiers arrived. Israeli TV stations said a Gaza incursion was expected on Friday, though military officials said no decision had been made.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he authorized the call-up of reservists, and the army said up to 30,000 additional troops could be drafted.

"We will continue the attacks and we will increase the attacks, and I believe we will obtain our objectives," said Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Israel's military chief.

Hamas, meanwhile, warned it would strike deeper inside Israel with Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets, acknowledging for the first time it has such longer-range weapons capable of hitting targets some 47 miles (75 kilometers) away. Tel Aviv is 40 miles (70 kilometers) from Gaza.

By nightfall Thursday, Hamas said it had fired more than 350 rockets into Israel. Israel, which estimates Gaza militants have as many as 12,000 rockets, said some 220 rockets struck the Jewish state and another 130 were intercepted by an anti-missile shield.

Israel believes Hamas has significantly boosted its arsenal since the last Gaza war four years ago, including with weapons from Iran and from Libyan stockpiles plundered after the 2011 fall of the regime there.

"After four years, we became stronger, we have a strategy and we became united with all the military wings in Gaza," said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, referring to Hamas' setbacks during Israel's last major offensive in late 2008.

In the current round of fighting, Israel is facing an emboldened Hamas with a stronger arsenal and greater regional backing. Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, like Hamas a member of the region-wide Muslim Brotherhood, said he was sending a high-level delegation to Gaza on Friday in a show of support for the fellow Islamists there.

Both Israel and Hamas had largely observed an informal truce over the last four years, marred by occasional flare-ups. In recent days, however, border tensions escalated, then exploded into major violence Wednesday when Israel assassinated Hamas' secretive military chief, Ahmed Jabari, with a missile strike on his car.

Jabari led Hamas' 2007 takeover of the territory, turning small squads of Hamas gunmen into a fighting force and supervising Gaza's fledgling arms industry, including rocket production. He was long No. 1 on Israel's most-wanted list, particularly for his role in capturing Israeli Sgt. Gilad Schalit and holding him for more than five years.

On Thursday, Hamas gunmen fired machine guns in the air as frenzied mourners carried Jabari's body, wrapped in a white burial shroud, through the streets of Gaza City on a wooden stretcher. At the cemetery, young men surged toward the corpse, trying to touch Jabari's face before he was lowered into the grave in a chaotic scene.

Hamas' top leaders have dropped out of sight since the assassination, but it was not clear if they would be targets. The Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, said in a televised speech Thursday that the group "will not forget and not forgive" the killing of Jabari.

Late Thursday, Hamas security said an Israeli navy vessel fired toward a building about 50 yards (meters) from Haniyeh's house, where a generator supplies electricity for the prime minister and his neighbors in Shati, a beach-front refugee camp in Gaza City. It was not clear if Haniyeh was home at the time.

In Israel, a rocket hit a four-story apartment building in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi on Thursday, killing two men and a pregnant woman. A 4-year-old boy and two babies were wounded in the attack.

Many Gazans stayed indoors and streets were largely empty, though there was no sense of widespread panic. Some said Hamas should take revenge, even at the price of further Israeli retaliation.

"If Israel strikes us, we have to strike back," said Ahmed Barakat, a 33-year-old laborer from Gaza City attending the Jabari funeral. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

In Jerusalem, thousands of mourners attended the funeral of Mira Scharf, a 26-year-old mother of three who was killed in Thursday's rocket strike in Israel. Israeli media said she was pregnant and had recently returned to Israel from New Delhi to give birth.

In central Tel Aviv, Adrian Cisser, a 35-year-old electrician, was in a bicycle shop when an air raid siren went off.

"People on the street started running," he said. "The public shelter nearby was locked so we just stayed in the shop, and two minutes after it started we heard this big bang."

Cisser said he had gotten a preliminary call from the army and expects to be called up for reserve duty next week.

In the southern Tel Aviv suburb of Rishon Lezion, where a Hamas rocket landed in an empty field, a siren sent people rushing for shelter.

"There is panic in our house and we can hear shouts from the street," a resident who gave her first name, Lital, told the Israeli news site YNet. "Children were running away, trying to find shelter. It was very stressful. I am shaken up."

From Israel's perspective, Hamas escalated the fighting with a pair of attacks in recent days, an explosion in a tunnel along the Israeli border and a missile attack on an Israeli military jeep that seriously wounded four soldiers.

An Israeli ground offensive could be costly to both sides. In the last Gaza war, Israel devastated large areas of the territory, setting back Hamas' fighting capabilities but also paying the price of increasing diplomatic isolation because of the high civilian casualty toll.

The current round of fighting is reminiscent of the first days of Israel's three-week offensive against Hamas that began in December 2008. At the time, Israel also caught Hamas off-guard with a barrage of missile strikes and threatened to follow up with a ground offensive.

However, much has also changed since then.

Israel has improved its missile defense systems, but is facing a more heavily armed Hamas.

Netanyahu, who has clashed even with his allies over the deadlock in Mideast peace efforts, appears to have less diplomatic leeway than his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, making a protracted military offensive harder to sustain.

The White House came out in support of Israel on Thursday, with spokesman Jay Carney saying there is "no justification" for rocket fire from Gaza and urging militants to stop "cowardly acts."

However, the regional constellation has changed dramatically since the last Gaza war. Hamas has emerged from its political isolation as its parent movement, the region-wide Muslim Brotherhood, rose to power in several countries in the wake of last year's Arab Spring uprisings, particularly in Egypt.

On Thursday, the Egyptian president ordered his prime minister, Hesham Kandil, to lead a senior delegation to Gaza on Friday in a show of support for Hamas. Morsi has called Israel's campaign against Hamas "unacceptable" and has recalled Egypt's ambassador to Israel in protest.

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Associated Press writers Ariel David in Tel Aviv and Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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Xi Jinping takes helm of China amid reform calls

BEIJING (AP) — Xi Jinping became leader of China on Thursday, securing the Communist Party's top spot and oversight of the military in a political transition upset by scandals that have added fuel to public demands for change as the country faces slower economic growth.

Xi's elevation to party general secretary and chairman of the commission that oversees the People's Liberation Army was announced in a dispatch by the state Xinhua News Agency, following a weeklong party congress that underlined the communists' determination to remain firmly in power.

Xi will lead a new seven-member collective leadership of technocrats: Li Keqiang, the presumptive premier; Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang; Shanghai party secretary Yu Zhengsheng; propaganda chief Liu Yunshan; Vice Premier Wang Qishan; and Tianjin party secretary Zhang Gaoli.

The members of the new panel filed onto stage at the Great Hall of the People and Xi addressed the gathered reporters.

The son of a party elder, and vice president for the past five years, Xi will lead the world's No. 2 economy and newest diplomatic and military power amid increasingly vocal calls for economic and political reform — including from within the 82-million-member party itself.

At ease with colleagues, Xi takes over the party leadership from the stiff and technocratic Hu Jintao, and is expected to assume the presidency in March.

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Verizon says 1.4 million customers back on its fiber optic network

(Reuters) – Verizon Communications said fiber optic services have been restored to more than 1.4 million customers hurt by Hurricane Sandy.

The provider of telephone, Internet and television services said on November 1 that it may take another two weeks to restore telecommunication services for its customers after flooding and power outages knocked out services.

The company said it completed 364,000 repairs across the mid-Atlantic and northeast regions.

Verizon said it will provide credits for landline customers and fix equipment damaged due to the hurricane.

Verizon shares were up at $ 42.39 after the bell on Wednesday. They closed at $ 42.24 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting By Pallavi Ail in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Erdrich wins National Book Award for fiction

NEW YORK (AP) — Louise Erdrich's "The Round House" has won the National Book Award for fiction.

Katherine Boo's "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" won the nonfiction award Wednesday night at a New York ceremony. David Ferry's "Bewilderment" won for poetry, and William Alexander's "Goblin Secrets" won for young people's literature.

Winners each received $10,000.

Honorary prizes were given to novelist Elmore Leonard and New York Times publisher and chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.

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New gene triples risk for Alzheimer's disease

Scientists have identified a new gene variant that seems to strongly raise the risk for Alzheimer's disease, giving a fresh target for research into treatments for the mind-robbing disorder.

The problem gene is not common — less than 1 percent of people are thought to have it — but it roughly triples the chances of developing Alzheimer's compared to people with the normal version of the gene. It also seems to harm memory and thinking in older people without dementia.

The main reason scientists are excited by the discovery is what this gene does, and how that might reveal what causes Alzheimer's and ways to prevent it. The gene helps the immune system control inflammation in the brain and clear junk such as the sticky deposits that are the hallmark of the disease. Mutations in the gene may impair these tasks, so treatments to restore the gene's function and quell inflammation may help.

"It points us to potential therapeutics in a more precise way than we've seen in the past," said Dr. William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer's Association, which had no role in the research. Years down the road, this discovery will likely be seen as very important, he predicted.

It is described in a study by an international group published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.

Until now, only one gene — ApoE — has been found to have a big impact on Alzheimer's risk. About 17 percent of the population has at least one copy of the problem version of this gene but nearly half of all people with Alzheimer's do. Other genes that have been tied to the disease raise risk only a little, or cause the less common type of Alzheimer's that develops earlier in life, before age 60.

The new gene, TREM2, already has been tied to a couple other forms of dementia. Researchers led by deCODE Genetics Inc. of Iceland honed in on a version of it they identified through mapping the entire genetic code of more than 2,200 Icelanders.

Further tests on 3,550 Alzheimer's patients and more than 110,000 people without dementia in several countries, including the United States, found that the gene variant was more common in Alzheimer's patients.

"It's a very strong effect," raising the risk of Alzheimer's by three to four times — about the same amount as the problem version of the ApoE gene does, said Dr. Allan Levey, director of an Alzheimer's program at Emory University, one of the academic centers participating in the research.

Researchers also tested more than 1,200 people over age 85 who did not have Alzheimer's disease and found that those with the variant TREM2 gene had lower mental function scores than those without it. This adds evidence the gene variant is important in cognition, even short of causing Alzheimer's.

"It's another piece in the puzzle. It suggests the immune system is important in Alzheimer's disease," said Andrew Singleton, a geneticist with the National Institute on Aging, which helped pay for the study.

One prominent scientist not involved in the study — Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, a Harvard Medical School geneticist and director of an Alzheimer's research program at Massachusetts General Hospital — called the work exciting, but added a caveat.

"I would like to see more evidence that this is Alzheimer's" rather than one of the other dementias already tied to the gene, Tanzi said. Autopsy or brain imaging tests can show whether the cases attributed to the gene variant are truly Alzheimer's or misdiagnosed, he said.

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Online:

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov

Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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