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

How about a study with n1?

[Ichoran]

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.

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?

[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.

Log term effects?

[ArsonSmith]

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?

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;

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.

Re:Log term effects?

[Valdrax]

I know you're joking, but I'll take cancer over Alzheimer's. Even if the drug directly caused it. I may die in miserable pain, but I'll die as me.

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.

Just In Time for Terry!

[Dunx]

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.

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

[Jhon]

1. To bring up as a subject for discussion or debate.
2. Of no practical importance; irrelevant.

Seeing how effecient and successful the UN runs, I think perhaps you could read that as "To bring up as a subject for discussion or debate is of no practical importance and irrelevant".

Glad we cleared that up.

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.

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.