100 Year-Old Drug Halts Progress Of Alzheimer's

pafischer writes "Several Australian and UK websites are running articles on this story. I'm shocked that I heard it on the Baltimore rock radio station news, but don't see it on any of the big US new websites. 'Clioquinol, developed 100 years ago, can absorb the zinc and copper compounds that concentrate in the brains of Alzheimer's sufferers before dementia sets in, the study found.' Read all about it at ABC Radio AU, The Sidney Morning Herald, and The Age." Of course, the pathology of Alzheimer's is far from fully understood.

Comments

Watch the big drug companies kill this QUICK

[Anonymous Coward]

100-year old drug means no patents. No patents means no profits. No profits means the drugco's won't TOUCH it. And in fact I wouldn't be surprised if we see some studies showing that it causes cancer or something.

Sorry folks. Alzheimer's won't get an effective until Pfizer is good and READY.

Testing testing testing - Re:It's be great to see

[leoaugust]

This is, again, a pilot study, so our next step is to take it into a much larger series of patients, either this drug or a better drug we have in development. What we have on the drawing boards is a better version of this drug which is more effective and will probably go into trials hopefully before the end of this year.

This is just a pilot study with a small number of patients.

• First it has to be scaled up to involve a lot more people.
• Secondly there has to be long term monitoring of the side-effects of the medication on a much larger population - you need to have samples of young and old, sick with A or B, taking medication x or y, with previous condition of m or n, etc.
• Thirdly, you have to find companies with big pockets that can finance the research, massive clinical trials, manufacture the drug, and then help put it on the doctor's prescription pad.
• Fourthly, in the US the FDA is probably going to take 10 years or more to approve this. And in the intervening 10 years FDA may decide not to approve it after all, so the risk in trying to commercialize a drug is enormous.
• Fifthly, there are many products that show potential early on, but then in the Phase 2 or 3 they find something not-good about it. And then down the toilet it goes.
• Sixthly, the early investors may find the news a something that they can speculate based on (even that is too early for this drug) but for the rest it is a long long slog, and a small probability, that this drug will finally enter the market.
• So, it is not that big a news to be making headlines worldwide.

very interesting - especially considering BSE/CJD

[vnv]

It's been known for the past few years that Alzheimer's and Creutzfeld-Jacobs Disease (CJD) are eerily similar, especially considering that the symptoms of Alzheimer's and CJD are also eerily similar.

In fact, at least 13% of Alzheimer's cases are indeed CJD caused by mad cow. If larger studies were done, this percentage could end up much higher.

It may turn out that Alzheimer's is due to mad cow, or its predecessor, mad sheep (scrapie).

I hope that any new studies of this drug also focus on how it works in people versus CJD.

All over the beef-eating world, we are seeing CJD very early in people. Italy's only known case of CJD was a man who was merely 27 years old. Given CJD's incubation time, it would indicate that mad cow/BSE/CJD has been in Italy anywhere from 5 to 15 years.

For transmission between people, CJD is a blood borne disease, similar to HIV in how it spreads. This would explain why the ramp on Alzheimer's is so rapid and why so many young people are getting Alzheimer's.

Almost all the medical news regarding mad cow/BSE/CJD has been killed in the US. The simplest assumption would be that there is far more mad cow in the system than anyone wants to say. Only a ingenuous imbecile would think that out of over 35 million cows that are killed every year in the US, over the past 10 years or more, only 1 cow from Canada had BSE/mad cow. Especially considering that the US imports 1.7 million cows from Canada every year. And 1 million from Mexico. In both countries, Canada and Mexico, they have followed the US lead and perform near zero mad cow/BSE testing.

Anyhow, that is a lot on the crazy cow. I am hoping a fool's hope that Alzheimer's does not turn out to be caused by crazy cow. For if it is, there will be an epidemic of dementia in the USA unless a cure is found in the immediate future.

Of course an upcoming unstoppable Alzheimer's epidemic... would clearly explain the sudden and massive urge to offshore all jobs that require brain power to India, land of the sacred cow :-)

Re:Wait a minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of taking aspirin for heart problems?

Re:very interesting - especially considering BSE/C

[Arthur Dent]

Actually, there is no record of 20,500 downers being tested. UPI has been requesting the test results for a while now and was told that theUSDA is still searching for the test documentation.

USDA officials told UPI as recently as Dec. 17 the agency still is searching for documentation of its mad cow testing results from 2002 and 2003.

UPI initially requested the documents on July 10, and the agency sent a response letter dated July 24, saying it had launched a search for any documents pertaining to mad cow tests from 2002 and 2003.

"If any documents exist, they will be forwarded," USDA official Michael Marquis wrote in the letter.

Despite this and a 30-day limit under the Freedom of Information Act on responding to such a request, the USDA never sent any corresponding documents. The agency's FOI office also did not return several calls from UPI placed over a series of months.

Are these items possibly related?

[GuardianBob420]

This discussion from earlier cited some new research that suggests that some nano-particles can migrate directly into the brian via the olfactories... can anybody think of a good source of nano-sized "zinc and copper compounds that concentrate in the brains of Alzheimer's sufferers" - industrial, natural, or otherwise?