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Alzheimer's Treatment Mooted
aminorex writes "Enbrel (etanercept) has been immediately, markedly, and consistently effective in all Alzheimer's patients, according to a report in Science Daily. The original research article is available online at the Journal of Neuroinflammation web site. "We can see cognitive and behavioral improvement in a patient with established dementia within minutes of therapeutic intervention" comments one Journal editor."
"All Alzheimer's patients" may be over-optimistic, but according to the article, though the research it concerns has been heavily focused on a single patient, "many other patients with mild to severe Alzheimer's received the treatment and all have shown sustained and marked improvement."
Mooted... I do not think you know what that word means.
Huh ? How do I refresh this thing ? Who am I again ? hehehe
I'm really not sure why this "study" was worth publishing. Where are the statistics of patient status after injection of drug vs. injection of drug-free control? How about a timecourse? Or anything besides anecdotes from one patient?
The hype on the article compared to what is shown is shocking. Even if the compound is a silver bullet that instantly and completely reverses Alzheimer's, you'd never know it from a paper like this. So this is an essentially useless bit of PR.
Do we really want to put people on new drugs like this? What if in 40 years all these people come down with some kind of cancer?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
For all the medical problems society obsesses over treatments for (cancer, aids, and other popular areas), Alzheimer's (and senility in general) is the one that scares me the most. I would rather die in pain, with my mind intact, than slowly forget who I am.
My paternal grandmother died before Alzheimer's was well recognized, but in retrospect it's pretty likely to be the cause of her condition. My grandfather, having seen his wife forget who he was, was always far more afraid of going down that same path than he was of his own approaching end - and I can easily see his point.
The worst part about growing old isn't physical frailty... it's the slow breakdown of cognitive power. Of course, as a 33-year-old I can say this with absolute authority. The worst part of *that* is that it doesn't wait to start until you're old, either. I'm sure most of you have noticed changes over the years, and not all of them good.
Here's a question that's been on my mind lately. How would most of you rate changes to how your mind has worked over the years? Have you noticed your reflexes aren't what they were when you were a teenager? Looking at any older writings of yours, have you ever had the feeling that your imagination may have grown more refined, but also lost some of it's raw power at some point? Regardless of the cognitive rewards of time and experience, are there any earlier capabilities that you feel you may have lost some grip on, or even noticed more clearly in younger coworkers or relatives than you used to?
In my case, for example, I've noticed that in a video game, I just don't react to unexpected situations quite as fast or well as I used to. I remember charging into a room in Doom, blasting everything I saw and dodging almost every shot - whereas lately I tend to get hit more often - I don't do the duck-and-dodge like I did in my teens and early 20's. On the other hand, I'm much more calculating in every move I make, and find it easier to manipulate computer opponents than it used to be - even with all the advances in AI. I don't have the raw speed and reaction time that I used to, but the intellectual component comes more readily and with virtually no effort compared to before.
What do you younger guys think of the minds of older coworkers? What about any of you in your 30's and 40's, in dealing with people younger or older than you on an intellectual level? And of the most interest to me, how do you geezers (I know there's some who come here - maybe even a handful) relate to us 30-somethings? Do we seem like slightly inexperienced versions of your peers? Or do we seem like idiot children with fast reflexes but weak comprehension?
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
Well, that is different from my understanding of the disease. I saw a program on PBS called "Brain Fitness" and they talk about a lot of things related to the brain. They touch in Alzheimer's and what the internal physical effects are.
It's hard to believe that a degenerative disease can be corrected almost instantly. They talked about the connection between different cells and the multiple connections to those cells with other cells that give people the ability to put ideas together. They said that when those connections physically weaken, then the memories start to "fade."
I'm curious as to how this drug accomplishes having cells communicate once again even though their paths are no longer viable for transmitting information.
Although i'm a skeptic on this drug, if it works i'll give it to my grandma! Maybe it'll keep her from waking up in the middle of the night and asking if the chicken is ready!
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
With any luck this treatment will be (a) effective enough, and (b) available enough in the UK for it to have a positive effect on Terry Pratchett's condition.
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
1. To bring up as a subject for discussion or debate.
2. Of no practical importance; irrelevant.
Very obnoxious word that way.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Mod anon up. None of us is as cruel as all of us
The patients keep forgetting to take their meds!
This news is very bright. I've seen the effects of Alzheimer's, and it can be horrifically damaging not only to the immediate sufferer, but to their entire family. This sort of dramatically, immediately effective solution for a very real and pressing human need is why science and technology are outrageously cool.
Amgen and Wyeth jointly market Enbrel. Given the size of the aging boomer population, I expect this to make a huge amount of money. Therefore, I'm planning to put my liquid investment funds into AMGN (which is at a better technical condition for a run-up than Wyeth), in the morning. Even if it takes a couple of years before Alzheimer's use gets approval, it's going to see a lot of off-label use meanwhile, and the long-term investment is excellent, in an otherwise pretty dismal market environment.
I would guess that Indian generic manufacturers will take it up too, long before it goes off-patent in the US and Europe, but it's hard to say who will get there first.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The scientific discussion is still ongoing, IMHO.
The problem mostly is that we're still dealing with symptoms and not with the underlying mechanistic fault that causes AD.
For example, we're investigating various drugs that remove plaque in the brain, but the problem arises that we don't have anything that actually corrects the mechanism which creates the plaque in the first place. And most of the treatments are moderately risky so far.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
i'm crueler than you. also, GP - you are banned from teh intarnets. Go. Now.
While the basic biology seems sound, this result is from only one patient while one of the authors holds stock in the company that manufactures the drug and has applied for several patents for its use in treating Alzheimer's.
Pardon me while I await the large sample, randomized controlled double-blind study by authors with no competing interests to confirm these findings.
My two-minute Pubmed screening (dinner's getting cold) shows that it seems that this guy's more recent papers, at least, are all technical note-like submissions in online journals. He also has some noted conflicts of interest. However, there is one pilot study. I don't know if this link will work without going through Pubmed, but this is a year-old pilot study that is probably not the one referenced in the article. They basically conclude, like so many other pilots, that the treatment is promising but needs more rigorous study.
Really? Naaaaaaaaaa.
Etanercept is not a "new" drug, in the sense that it has already been trialed and approved for use in various inflamatory conditions such as Rheumatoid Arthritis. What concerns me is use of the perispinal injection and what trials have been conducted for this method of delivery. It looks like there is a link between this study and other research by Dr Edward Tobinick. I found a reference to a 6 month trial of this treatment involving 15 patients: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/529176 (registration required) I also found a Medline reference to an article on "Efficacy of etanercept delivered by perispinal administration for chronic back and/or neck disc-related pain: a study of clinical observations in 143 patients" Current Medical Research & Opinion 20(7):1075-85, 2004 Jul
Congratulations - you have just been manipulated by the submitter, who was hoping this would happen.
I'm not a doctor, but as a Slashdot Editor, I feel free to correct those who are.
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
Now, who are you again?
Actually, being in the 30's too, I'd say it's exactly the opposite image than you paint.
One thing I've eventually recognized, and struck me as very interesting, is that your own impression of how much you know doesn't depend on age, as such. If you were to plot Y = how much you think you know, vs X = how much you actually know, it would look pretty much like a Gauss curve, with a very early peek.
When you're first learning a new domain, be it programming or playing the guitar or playing Go, at first your own impression of your progress goes up almost exponentially. Tiny, trivial, new things learned seem as if you're becoming teh uber-expert fast.
Seriously. My first attempts at playing Go, made me believe that I'm the next champion at it. In reality I had barely progressed the first couple of kyu (out of about 30 kyu ranks, i.e., novice ranks, and that's before even getting into the dan range where the real skill is.)
Trying to learn an instrument was the same. I could barely do the most simple tunes, but it seemed like I'm a natural-born music genius. Surely at that rate I'll be the next super-star within a year or two.
Trying to learn programming, well, let's just say writing a 1k BASIC program seemed like I'm the programming gods' avatar and prophet. Now add some assembly and a bit of Pascal in there, and I could swear that I'm the biggest programming genius that ever walked the Earth. Sure, dad's coleagues who were writing assembly 8 hours a day for a living, just smiled and politely nodded at my one-page programs, but I was sure that that's just because they're boring old adults.
And if at this point anyone wants to answer along the lines of, "OMG, you're stupid", well, yes, in retrospect I was. But the consolation is that I'm not the only one. You can see it in a lot of other people, exactly the same. E.g., in all the schoolkids who've barely learned to pluck a few notes on a guitar, and already think they're the next rock super-star, and are already planning band tours.
At any rate, that rapid over-estimation of one's abilities comes to a peak eventually. There's a point where it seems you know almost everything (or will surely find it trivial if you ever have to deal with anything else.)
That's simply the point where you haven't yet learned how much you _don't_ know yet. You're like the village kid who's climbed the little hill outside the village, and thinks that he's at the top of the world. Simply because he doesn't even know yet that there's an Everest somewhere else.
And then it starts to gradually go down as you start to learn about all the things you don't know yet. Plus you're running out of trivial things to plough through, so that extrapolation that everything left is also trivial, no longer seems that founded.
It seems to me that a lot of people experienced that curve, and mistake it for effects of age. When in fact it's anything but. Yes, you'll be arrogant and sure you know everything when you're young, because, well, chances are you're only then reaching that peak. But if you started on another domain at 40, you'd probably experience the same curve shifted to that point. You'd reach a point at 45-50 when you think you're the super-genius on your new domain, and the whole world is doomed to worship you for ever.
Yes, your cognitive functions _will_ eventually decline, but at 33 they haven't even properly started to. You may fancy you already feel the effects of age, but that's likely all in your imagination and a bit of selective-confirmation for your own fears.
Last time I saw, for example, a curve of inventions against age, it peaked a little after 35, and it won't be until the 50's that you're back to being as much of a "genius" as in your teenage years. Other curves peaked a lot later. E.g., literary or musical masterpieces vs age peaked in the 50's and 60's respectively.
The thing about games... well, there are so many possibilities for what you think you're noticing there, that I don't even know where to
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's an old article, but if you really want to know about Alzheimer's research, look into what they've been able to do using the Pittsburgh Compound.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Most of my cow-orkers are idiots, regardless of age, so I guess that the only conclusion I can draw from this is that as I've gotten older (I just turned 38 a couple of weeks ago) I've grown more cynical and less tolerant of others' mental shortcomings. ;-)
:-)
As for reflexes, they've slowed a bit but not as much as I'd feared they would back when I was a teenager. I can still pull off the occasional double-jump-then-headshot-in-midair-while-maneuvering-around-the-incoming-rocket maneuver, but it's less common than it used to be and I get more enjoyment out of mental gymnastics (Portal is my current obsession).
All in all I think I'm sharper and smarter than I was 10 or 20 years ago with one glaring exception. My short-term memory and attention span have turned to complete crap. It's so bad that I've considered possibly seeing a doctor. I forget what I'm saying in mid sentence (unrecoverably) at least a couple of times per day, and am able to function at work only because I always carry around a note pad as a rolling "To Do" list. At my wife's suggestion I've started keeping a pad of post-it notes at the computer at home so that if I sit down to (for example) check e-mail and update a web site I'll actually do both tasks, rather that start one, get distracted half way through, and then end up completing neither one. Yes, two items requires a list. A single distraction can lead to a chain that sets be back hours without even realizing it. Ever put in a DVD and then forget to press play? To say that it's frustrating would be an understatement.
It's also easier for me to do most of my communication by e-mail or chat rather than in person, since I can't very well take notes on things I want to mention while the person I'm talking with is speaking. It's like my mind is just as quick to think of things as it's always been, but the stack that holds things between when they're thought of and acted upon has vanished.
Oh, and my hearing now sucks ass as well, but that's directly attributable to my best friend in high school getting car stereo components at cost.
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