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

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.

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.