Earlier Administration Of Medication May Prevent Alzheimer’s

At a recent meeting of the Society for Neuroscience scientists updated the way they look at Alzheimer’s disease. According to John Morrison of Mount Sinai Medical School in New York, treatment for the disease probably needs to begin years or even decades before symptoms even begin to appear.

"By the time an Alzheimer's patient is diagnosed even with mild or moderate Alzheimer's there is very, very extensive neuron death," he said, "And the neurons that die are precisely those neurons that allow you to navigate the world and make sense of the world."

"We need to move way back in time and intervene before there's extensive neuron death."

It’s possible that the failure of recent drug trials for Alzheimer’s is because they were administered after symptoms had already appeared.

Another Mount Sinai doctor, Sam Gandy, believes it’s possible the drugs tested in the past may have been discarded prematurely. "Now that we can see the changes in the brain that underlie Alzheimer's, we really should re-evaluate some of the things we've looked at."

How early to start treatment may now be the next hurtle. A study presented at the meeting may suggest it could be a decade or even more.

Lori Beason-Held of the National Institute on Aging is heading a trial with 121 people who are being followed as they age. Periodic scans measure brain function in certain areas.

The study indicates that changes in the brain may occur up to 11 years before presentation of symptoms. But Beason-Held believes it could be even earlier.

"If we need to stop things before they even start, it could be 20 years before somebody develops the symptoms," Beason-Held said. "If it turns out that we can reverse some of the pathology then it might be, say, 10 years."

If this is the case then earlier discarded trial drugs may have just been given too early. But retesting them means administering them to younger people with no thinking or memory issues that may never manifest as Alzheimer’s.

One possibility is treating those people with a family history of the disease of early onset Alzheimer’s. This may eventually result in a preventative course of treatment.

But for now scientists continue to be hopeful and resolute.

Source material: National Public Radio