Drug Halts Decline In Alzheimer's Patients

ljw1004 writes "Alzheimer's researchers are divided on whether the disease is caused by 'beta amyloid' (a peptide found in Alzheimer brains) or by 'tau protein' (normally used for cellular scaffolding, but can aggregate out of control and destroy neurons). Today in Chicago a new drug has been announced that stops tau aggregation and appears to have halted Alzheimer's-related decline in 300 clinical trial patients. The drug is known as 'rember.' Do you have friends or family who appear to be on the road to dementia? Here is an online questionnaire, part of one used in the clinical trial to diagnose dementia. (Disclosure: I made the online questionnaire, and my father is one of the scientists behind the drug.)"

Comments

Rember

[StarfishOne]

"The drug is known as 'rember.' "

Is that a deliberate pun on 'remember'? :?

Video games...

[Notquitecajun]

Odd thing about Gen-xers and the following generations...due to our proliferation in playing video games, there won't be as many of us with Alzheimer's, but EVERY one of us is going to wind up with carpal tunnel.

Thank your dad for his research for all of us - this is one of the worst ways to go.

Re:Wow, that's awesome

[hansraj]

Let me see: On one hand I have a disease that gives me a rather quick (even though painful) death, and on other I have something that slowly turns me into a vegetable. Tough choice? I think not.

If I was forced to pick one (without a hope for cure once I made my choice) I would pick Ebola any day of the week. Thank you very much.

Re:Wow, that's awesome

[loafula]

Locked in syndrome More condition than disease, but this is the worst thing I could imagine anyone ever experiencing.

Re:Wow, that's awesome

[Tim C]

Personally I'd still rather that, than not recognise my daughter. I'd also rather put my loved ones through a relatively swift and dramatic end to my life, than a very slow, gradual decline, in which I am effectively dead to them (as I don't know who they are) long before I stop breathing or moving around.

Re:Wow, that's awesome

[PakProtector]

Haemorrhagic Fevers are bad, but not as bad as the public seems to paint them. Films such as Outbreak, and books such as Richard Preston's Hot Zone have made it seem like Filoviruses and other haemorrhagic diseases kill you in a matter of hours and cause you to have to be buried in a water-tight plastic bag. This is about as accurate as saying cancer patients are going to mutant into something that looks like a Horta due to out-of-control cellular replication.

For Ebola in particular, there are methods of treatment, including a post-exposure vaccine that has shown to be 99% effective in monkeys. The only downside is that it must be administered very quickly, or there will be too much damage already done to the patient (within 4 days.)

I can thinking of many ways of dying that are far more agonising that Ebola. MS would be one. To be gradually robbed of my motor and mental skills would be a horrible and terrifying experience. As someone who recently lost a family member who suffered from senile dementia (and whose dementia was directly responsible for her death), I can say that it is definitely worse for the sufferer than for the family. As painful as your loved one not knowing who you are is, it is far more painful for them, and to watch them, come back to moments of lucidity, only to have to have where they are and what has happened explained to them yet again.

I think it is a sign of the times that people seem to think that physical agony can even begin to compare to psychological agony.

beta amyloid

[PHPNerd]

(I'm a PhD Neuroscience student) It seems like more and more scientists are moving away from the beta amyloid plaque buildup hypthesis. While it seemed like a great lead, people who die with no symptoms of dementia or Alzheimer's Disease can still have a buildup of beta amyloid plaque as massive as the person who did die of Alzheimer's. It could be that high levels of beta amyloid plaque buildup increases the risk of getting Alzheimer's, though. It's a hard disease to crack, that's for sure. If this new drug really does work, it'll save 5 million lives a year, and that's just in the past few years; as the Baby Boomers all get past 65 we're going to start seeing a massive increase in Alzheimer's Disease.

He suffers from Alzheimer's Disease. She has it!

[Frans Faase]

Although Alzheimer's Disease might seem a very scary disease, the reality is often that the family members suffer most. As a partner of someone with Alzheimer's Disease, I can affirm this. Although my wife is only in the early stages of the disease, the effects are already dramatic. She is no longer my equal and I often feel I have to treat her like a teenager, as she is showing similar kind of behaviour. Our teenager daughter is also suffering from not having a "normal" mom anymore.

Although most people with Alzheimer's Disease go through periodes of depression, they often appear to be rather happy with their condition, because they are no longer aware of what has happened to them. They forget that they forget.

Is it patentable?

[Thelasko]

From TFA:

Methylthioninium chloride is more commonly used as a blue dye in laboratory experiments.

Wikipedia also notes:

Methylene blue was used at the end of the century as a successful treatment for malaria. It disappeared as an anti-malarial during the wars in Asia, as U.S. soldiers disliked its two inevitable, fully reversible side effects: green urine and blue sclera. Interest in its use has recently been revived,[1] especially because it is very cheap.

Which raises the question, is it patentable? TFA notes that the study was funded by a pharmaceutical company, but I am worried that the funding will end when the company discovers that the drug won't be profitable.

So what's your point?

[Man On Pink Corner]

There are two schools of thought in drug research. One is to throw lots of stuff at the wall to see what sticks, and the other is "intelligent design," using extensive modelling and simulation to build molecules on spec. So far, the former school is ahead about ten thousand to one.

If you had syphilis in the early 1900s, would you balk at taking Salvarsan just because it contained arsenic, and because the guy who came up with it was on his 606th try? Well, we're in exactly the same boat now with respect to Alzheimer's.

4) "... the trial was funded by a pharmaceutical company..." according to the BBC article.

And they're getting results. What do you value more, your money or your sanity? If you get this particular disease, you (and your family) are going to be damned glad somebody came along and offered you the choice.

If you have a better process in mind, we're all ears. So far, the more-socialized European approach has given us, well, LSD.

Alzheimer's Research even worse than mentioned....

[spectecjr]

What gets me is that 3 years ago, people found a direct link between HHV1 (Herpes Simplex 1 - the kind you get coldsores from), and Alzheimers; literally, the plaques are riddled with the virus.

Add into the mix the fact that new hi-res MRI devices show microbleeds all over the brain of most people, and that these break the blood/brain barrier in those areas, and it gives a very simple mechanism for the virus to get into the brain (even if it doesn't just travel up the neurons themselves).

Why are people focusing on the plaques and the tangles? We have a virus here that lives inside of neurons, which has been found and strongly correlated with the disease.

There are other classes of herpes virus which have similarly been implicated in brain cancer. This should be a big fat red X marks the spot. But most researchers are too specialized.