Breakthrough Ultrasound Treatment To Reverse Dementia Moves To Human Trials

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: An extraordinarily promising new technique using ultrasound to clear the toxic protein clumps thought to cause dementia and Alzheimer's disease is moving to the first phase of human trials next year. The innovative treatment has proven successful across several animal tests and presents an exciting, drug-free way to potentially battle dementia. The ultrasound treatment was first developed back in 2015 at the University of Queensland. The initial research was working to find a way to use ultrasound to temporarily open the blood-brain barrier with the goal of helping dementia-battling antibodies better reach their target in the brain. However, early experiments with mice surprisingly revealed the targeted ultrasound waves worked to clear toxic amyloid protein plaques from the brain without any additional therapeutic drugs. The new announcement regarding the upcoming move to human trials is underpinned by a large funding injection from the Australian government helping accelerate the treatment's development. The first stage is a phase 1 safety trial, kicking off later in 2019, to explore the safety profile of the treatment in human subjects suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Comments

Re:I really hope this works, Alzheimer's is FUCKED

[GerryGilmore]

I was in a different situation. Mom developed Alzheimers and I became "the responsible adult". Long story short, had I not been making six-figures and had a spare house for her and her live-in caretaker to live and cover all the expenses, her life would have been a thousand times more hellish than it was already. Our society is failing these folks, not least by not universally allowing voluntary euthanasia for those who choose not to subject themselves to the indignities that result from - essentially - losing your mind.

Re:ten years can be an eternity

[Anonymous Coward]

This is cargo cult mentality. It will likely work as well as grass huts with coconut and vine radios did for calling in supplies to be airdropped from the gods into pacific island villages.

In reality, this procedure is likely to require special equipment used in a very specific way, most likely in conjunction with some other equipment and medicines.

Other studies have managed this too

[umafuckit]

If you read the literature (or just Google) you'll see that others have also managed to eliminate the plaques in various ways. However it remains unclear whether removal of the plaques leads to cognitive improvements. In some cases the animal models show improvement and in other cases not. The situation is even more unclear in people. There's a quick overview here. My own hunch is that a combination of early detection and then a treatment of some sort will be the way forward. Probably cognitive impairement will be hard to fix.