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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.
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.
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: How reliable is the study if it is only 36 patients?
COLIN MASTERS: 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.
I'd like to see the results after a much more extensive study has been conducted. If this really works, which at least with these preliminary tests suggest, it'd be nice to see alzheimers start to go the way if the dodo.
How could I say to men: "Speak louder, shout! For I am deaf!"? -Ludwig van Beethoven
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
100 Year-Old Drug Halts Progress Of Alzheimer's Rather, all the drug has been shown to do in this study is stop a few of the many chemical abnormalities that are coincident with alzheimers. It is unknown whether these chemicals actually do anything to cause alzheimers. They may as well be a byproduct of it, for all we know. It is also unknown how else this drug alters brain chemistry and what the side effects of that could be. So proclaiming it a miracle cure is very premature.
Repeal the DMCA!
This is the same problem with lithium. Can't be patented, so it isn't profitable enough. Lithium has been shown to prevent beta-amyloid accumulation. While beta-amyloid plaques are only associated with (not known to be causative of) Alzheimer's, the fact is that lithium may inhibit the pathological process that produces such plaques far enough upstream to be just what the doctor ordered. One problem with lithium, however, is that it's tough on the kidneys. People of Alzheimer's age might not tolerate that well -- nor other side effects like tremors. Regardless, it's been in wide use since the early 70's for other things. I believe there's some NIH-sponsored thrust to conduct clinical trials with AD patients, but don't quote me on it. If you have access, search through this summer's issues of Nature for the review article on lithium.
1. Loss of short term memory.
2. Confusion.
3. Short term memory loss.
All things in moderation; including moderation
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 :-)
It's a 100 yr old drug that is already approved to treat *SOME* illness. Therefore somebody must make it already for that other purpose. Doctors can prescribe drugs for purposes other than that for which they were designed. They don't need anyone's permission. So where's the issue?
Eat at Joe's.
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?
learn it first. Autopsied Alzheimer's brain shows no sign of the prion-nucleated chain reaction that is characteristic of Mad Cow or other prion diseases. It is amyloid-beta that accumulates in Alzheimer's. And it isn't even known whether the amyloid "plaques" are causative or simply an anomalous by-product.