Slashdot Mirror
Japanese Scientists Make Alzheimers Progress
grammar fascist writes "The AP wire reports that Japanese medical researchers have developed a DNA-based vaccine that reduces the brain plaque beta amyloid without the severe brain inflammation that plagued successes in 2002. From the story 'The deposits have been cut by between 15.5 percent and 38.5 percent in mice, with no major side effects, researchers said Monday in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [...] If all goes well, this type of treatment might be available for people in six or seven years, [lead researcher Yoh Matsumoto] said.'"
Anyone else read the headline and think: "why have the japanese made people's alzheimer's worse"
Can't we all just get along
Just ONCE I'd like to be cured of a disease ahead of the freakin' MICE.
You make new friends every day!
Even if they can cure it, the damage to the brain has already been done. We are talking about major brain tissue loss here. I doubt even stem cell therapy would help much depending how much damage you've taken.
Look at it this way. If you have Alzheimers, you're screwed! It's one of the many risks of being Human when you get older.
Life is not for the lazy.
Wyeth and Elan have a drug, AAB-001, which is a follow-up to AN-1792, the drug described as causing brain swelling 2 years ago, except AAB-001 doesn't cause brain swelling and is in Phase II trials (i.e., in humans, and not monkeys), and should be in Phase III at the end of this year. AAB-001 reduces amyloid plaque build-up and there is some anecdotal evidence coming out of the Phase II trial that some patients have achieved significant improvement (although no patient can know for sure they are on AAB-001 since it is a blinded trial.) No need to look towards the Japanese for significant Alzheimer's research, Elan and Wyeth have several programs addressing this horrible disease and are way ahead of the pre-IND drugs described in this article.
I've been doing various IT-like things my whole career, whether it's programming, consulting, or whatever. It's been a lot of fun, and I'm not particularly a biotech type, but I hope the tools we've built over the last few decades help the biotech folks do a much better job.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You're not supposed to make it progress, you're supposed to make it slow down!!!
/grumble
Oh, wait-
Darn RSS headline-only POS...
I came, I saw, I left. It looked better in the brochure.
After last night's soccer loss to Australia 3:1, it seems that most Japanese just want to forget...
GrpA.
Heh, But seriously, great research. Good to hear.
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Rather than waiting for ET to call or look for prime numbers, donate your spare CPU cycles to running the Folding@Home client. Its goal is to find out why proteins (mis)fold and how that affects things like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Cancer, Huntington's, and related diseases. Damn, would it be cool to have it be my computer that identified an alien signal... but since a close relative has been diagnosed with Parkinson's I'd much rather do something that's more immediately beneficial.
It'd be interesting to hear if/how the Folding@Home project has helped out groups like this.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I hope this and other stuff like this works before I get my onset... as a kid I had a bad habit of chewing aluminum can tabs, and I'm sure significan quantities broke off over the years...
ALUMINUM DOES NOT CAUSE ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE. This is a fallacy due to a Biologist not knowing how to operate an electron microscope. At that time, the "Aluminum" in Alheimer's patients' brains was the result of the biologist having the electron intensity turned-up too high, and instead of detecting just brain tissue, the biologist detected the Aluminum support holding the brain tissue.
So, the moral of the story is: KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING IN THE LABORATORY AND HAVE ACCURATE AND PRECISE DATA ANALYSIS WITH MEANINGFUL REPLICATION OF EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS BEFORE PUBLISHING IN JOURNALS!!!
It's been more than 10 years and the public still thinks that using products with "Aluminum", i.e. soda cans, anti-perspirant, etc... will cause/contribute to Alzheimer's disease. Wrong Wrong Wrong!!!
I know it's a very sensitive issue, but why don't they have programs to test medications like this on people are basically doomed anyway. You don't get better from alzheimers disease. Sometimes you stop getting worse, but you don't get better.
I'd be quite happy to sign something now to the effect of "if I have dementia to the point where I don't even know who I am any more, and there is a potential cure or treatment, sign me up.". If it kills me, or shortens my remaining life then I haven't really lost much, those around me will have gained something as caring for someone like that is a huge burden (and often significantly shortens the life of the spouse if they are still alive), and will benefit the scientists who are testing the treatment, even if its "oh well... so it doesn't work on people afterall".
It's probably a bit late to ask me once my mind is gone though.
With alzheimers though, can they tell yet if it's that or something else without taking your brain out of year head and chopping it up? I remember quite a few years (>10) ago when I had a relative who was thus aflicted, there was lots of initial misdiagnosises (or whatever the plural of that word is), and they basically said that they only way to be sure was to wait until the patient had passed away.
All that they really need to do is prevent its onset by about 10-15 years. If they could do this it would essentially eliminate the disease, as it arrives very late in life. They don't really need an outright cure, but some way to slow it down to the point where we will likely be dead from other things before we really have to worry about Alzheimers.
h tml
There was a great documentary on PBS called "The Forgetting," which went into this, I highly recommend it. http://www.pbs.org/theforgetting/coping/planning.