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."

Comments

Re:Log term effects?

[RetroGeek]

From the original article:

potential risks of etanercept, including infection, cytopenias, possible increased risk of lymphoma and demyelinating disease, death, eye inflammation, and congestive heart failure;

actually, they do

[BitterAndDrunk]

But it's an annoying fucking word, because its two meanings are actually opposite of one another:

1. To bring up as a subject for discussion or debate.

2. Of no practical importance; irrelevant.

Very obnoxious word that way.

Re:actually, they do

[stonecypher]

You're not entirely correct. You've taken one correct meaning and split it into two incorrect halves, then ratified the second half by confusing conjugations.

The verb "[to] moot [something]" is to raise an issue for the specific purpose of displaying it to be unimportant; this is the sense in which the article uses the word. Mooting something is an active and target-specific process whose intent is to weed out irrelevancies. If you have done either 1 or 2, but not the other, you have not mooted something. There is only one meaning, and it is not internally inconsistant at all.

Meaning number two is also the way the past tense adjective is spelled/pronounced. However, it is common in English to have an action and its result adjective be the same, despite that the result adjective represents only the end state of the action: I shot him, he was shot; what you've suggested is to point out that shot has two meanings, one to engage in the act of shooting someone, and also two, to be in the state representing having been hit by a bullet. The verb and its past tense correlated adjective are simply frequently structured thusly.

It's interesting, though, that this divide should seem apparent.

Re:How about a study with n1?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, this is a widely prescribed drug! It seems unlikely that it has massive, instantaneous effects on cognitive function that no one has noticed before.

I know it's wrong to read the article, but to work on Alzheimer's, the drug was injected into the spine. This is definitely an off-label use. Most likely, it doesn't cross the blood brain barrier. If this works, it might be possible to make a similar drug which can cross it.

Re:Log term effects?

[WillAffleckUW]

Is there a single person with Alzheimer's Disease and a life expectancy > 40 years? Somehow I think that's an acceptable risk.

No.

The average person with Probable Alzheimer's Disease status (there is no such thing as certain, until we take your brain and slice it and stain it, actually) has a life expectancy, even if they got early onset AD at around age 40, of at most 20 years.

Re:Log term effects?

[Danse]

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?

Do the math.

I think a 75 year old diagnosed with alzheimer's wouldn't blink at taking a chance on that. Coming down with cancer at 115 is not going to impact him much. He'll probably have died 15-25 years prior. Slasdot. Where everyone plays the straight man, without even realizing it.

One patient? Competing interests?

[a_d_white]

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.

Results of a few minutes of work

[Wilson_6500]

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.

Re:Alzheimer's and growing old

[CharlesEGrant]

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.

I'm sure circumstances vary widely, but my experience is just the opposite. In the last few years my wife and I have lost all four of our parents: hers to heart disease and Parkinson's, mine to heart disease and Alzheimer's. None of them is a picnic, but from what I saw, Parkinson's was a much harder road then the others. The initial diagnosis of Alzheimer's was devastating to my mother, but as the disease progressed she lost track of the fact that she was severely impaired. The world became a very confusing and sometimes frightening place for her, but death and suffering no longer loomed over her. Life was lived minute to minute. Some minutes were good, and some were bad, but they never lasted very long, and there is some comfort in that. My father-in-law had a Parkinson's like condition and retained his mental acuity to the bitter end. For three years he could fully appreciate the gradual process of being buried alive in his own body. He bore it stoically, but you could see how frightening it was.

By contrast, the deaths from heart disease were traumatic, but quickly over.