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

Alzheimer's and growing old

[LithiumX]

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?

Re:Alzheimer's and growing old

[another_twilight]

From personal experience I tend to 'learn' a response to certain situations (patterns of AI in games for eg). The first few instances are all reaction, but as time goes on it starts to become stimulus-response. I suspect that as you get older you accumulate a larger set experiences from which you can draw - simultaneously giving you a greater depth and refinement to your response, but requiring less and less pure reaction.

What you don't use, you lose. I dare say that just as physical fitness, which used to be so easy in our 20s now requires more effort to maintain, so too mental flexibility, responsiveness and reaction.

Anecdotally, I have not yet observed a degredation in raw reaction (late 30s), but I have been fairly agressive in making sure to constantly find things that require that I use/exercise this. Try learning a new physical activity/sport (and then another in a year or so). Find new ways to play games - yes, you can out-think your AI opponent, so how about playing with pistol/s only? No save/restores?.

It may be that the comparison to physical fitness/conditioning is a poor one and it is simply a matter of maintaining a 'familiarity' with novelty so that my brain doesn't insist on trying to find a learned response to use in every situation. Perhaps it will all catch up with me shortly, and/or my self-perception is more distorted than I have allowed. YMMV.

Re:Alzheimer's and growing old

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Well, as you've mentioned aging and reflexes I suppose I have some leeway here.

I'm male and now well into my 32nd year of life, and I'm forcing myself to whack off a lot more these days.

Wait, wait! Upon all that might be holy, I swear this is not a troll.

I was reading through the Slashdot firehose stories just yesterday when this one caught my attention: Fatherhood Linked To Prostate Cancer Risk. I voted it up and hoped that enough other people would notice it and do the same for it to become a front-page story, but evidently that did not happen. The gist of the story is that males with no children are at lower risk for prostate cancer than men who do have children. But, amongst those men who do have children, the more kids they have, the more their risk begins to decline again! How about that.

Of course, me being a male Slashdot reader, I immediately came to the conclusion that the root cause of this is the amount of ejaculation going on. (Again, I swear this is not a troll.) Seriously ... think about it. As a bachelor male, at worst there's still a decent amount of masturbation going on and at best, actual sex (likely with as many women as possible). No kids, no woman dragging you down ... really nothing to kill your sex drive. But if you get saddled with kids (with or without a wife), how does sex (real or imaginary) have any appeal at that point? For most, not a whole lot. And if you are still interested in sex, how much does your now-a-mom wife or girlfriend really find sex interesting anymore? So your prostate starts to atrophy. It is part muscle, after all. The exception is if you're one of those really sex-crazed males or uber-religious types (and some will argue they're one and the same) who just continues bonking his wife and cranking out yet more kids. In that case, your prostate is still getting exercise.

So, umm, yeah. I've come to the conclusion that the prostate is much like any muscle ... use it or lose it. Or in this case, get cancer.

But getting back to your original question (and I hope by this point you've figured out why I'm posting this anonymously), when I reached a little past 31, my sex-drive died. I mean in a bullet-to-the-head kind of a way. I'd been absolutely obsessed with sex since before my teens, then all through them, and then clear through my twenties. Then I got to about 31.5 and it all came crashing to a halt. But with this somewhat unorthodox theory now on my mind, I've actually been forcing myself to masturbate as often as I humanly can. Yah, I know. If you folks are finding this just a little hard to believe, all I can say is that 10 years ago I'd have agreed with you. I'd be asking how the hell can any male have to force themselves to do something like that. It's like second nature for a male! But again, I tell you I can't believe how much my sex-drive has just come to a complete halt. It's like someone threw a switch. I only hope if you're having a hard time believing any of this now, that you never come to understand it yourself through first-hand experience, because it's actually kind of emasculating and depressing.

So in conclusion, as much as you may think aging may have affected you, there's always room for it t

Re:Alzheimer's and growing old

[Magada]

Still unsure if you're a troll, but... the statistical corellation between the frequency of ejaculations and prostate cancer likelyhood is well-documented. Sex is good for you, even if you do it one-handed!

So that's how it works eh? In minutes?

[socz]

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!

Re:How about a study with n1?

[Otter]

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.

As with the miraculous improvement in solar power efficiency in the next story, I'd love for this to work out but am not holding my breath.

Re:How about a study with n1?

[virtualXTC]

It isn't likely that AmGen would attempt to revise the structure of etanercept as they would then have painstakingly go back though every phase of clinical trials again with even the slightest modification. If they use the same product, they only need to complete Phase IIb (efficacy) and Phase III studies to market the drug for this now off-off label use.
While an injection to the spine may not seem ideal for patients, it would prove beneficial as there almost certainly would be many competitors to follow due to the fair number of other drugs that act on the exact same pathway. In fact, Embrol was actually originally developed as a rheumatory arthritis drug, targeting Tumor Necrosis Factor. (It has since been proven effective against many other autoimmune diseases.) While there are drugs like Remicade, Humira that also inhibit TNF, a positive result when using Embrol in Alzheimer's seems to implicate ANY drug that targets autoimmune disease as a possible cure.

Re:How about a study with n1?

[muridae]

It's also not likely that AmGen or Wyeth will work from Enbrel simple because it's a huge protein structure. 51234.9 g/mol is not tiny by any measure. Tweaking a protein to get through the blood brain barrier might not be the best way to go. This may be just a small part of the protein at work, or spinal injections might just be the simpler way to deliver it.

They could always re-patent some new delivery method, maybe a better diluent.