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New Alzheimer's Drug Shows Promise
An anonymous reader writes "The Herald Sun is reporting that researchers may have some progress to report on the Alzheimer's front. A new drug, called PBT2, was developed by a Melbourne-based biotech firm that has been showing some promising results. From the article: 'Early clinical testing has confirmed the drug is fast-acting. Levels of amyloid dropped by 60 per cent within 24 hours of a single dose. It found also that PBT2 suppresses the impairment of memory function. More human studies begin in Sweden next month and Australians will join a major international trial of the drug next year.'"
On the other hand if you take a look at the pdf linked on the homepage (pdf warning), you will see that it is a clinical trial designed to assess both safety and efficacy. It's pretty small numbers though (18 completers) and the efficacy is assesed by cognition tests. There's certainly no mention of amyloid reduction so that may well refer to the animal studies.
Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm.
I wonder (and perhaps someone with more education than I can speculate), if amyloid concetrations in the brain are reduced, will the patients be able to remember things that they have forgotten, or will they "just" be capable of remembering new information again?
The sad thing is that with proper building design, it's possible to make life much better for people with severe dementia. Many people react like your father-in-law because they don't understand why they're not allowed to leave. Another nursing home run by the same organisation I work for was built a few years ago with a specific dementia ward, and apparently it's much better for the residents. By most places where there have to be closed doors, they've eliminated much of the points for someone to focus on. The ward is designed as a circle with a garden breaking the ring, and the only entrance/exit is from the garden. Most people with severe dementia will wander in circles, getting distracted by the garden or other points. If you google for it there's actually been a lot of research done over the last fifteen years into caring for people with dementia, but that takes a while to filter into actual nursing homes. We're knocking our facility down and rebuilding sometime in the next five years, hopefully with some better design principles for the people we're handling.
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