Drug Halts Decline In Alzheimer's Patients 222
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.)"
Rember (Score:4, Interesting)
Is that a deliberate pun on 'remember'? :?
Re:Rember (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rember (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Rember (Score:5, Funny)
The underlying facts don't seem funny. (Score:4, Informative)
1) The person who submitted the story to Slashdot says, The trademark word "rember" is written with a lower-case initial letter [slashdot.org]. A trademark in a proper noun, and must be capitalized to show that it is not a common noun. The word seems to me to be chosen to confuse those who don't know how to think about drugs in a scientific way.
2) The "drug" is an aniline dye commonly used in laboratories. Aniline dyes have been known to cause cancer. See the comment about that, Odd facts about the BBC article [slashdot.org], which I posted below.
3) The Slashdot story is an advertisement, apparently. The company is looking for money for more trials. See the comment More odd facts about the drug "Rember" [slashdot.org].
4) The above comment links to a Chicago Sun-Times newspaper article which says that two-thirds of the study produced no results and were ignored. The one-third of the study which is being considered produced only "7 percent" results.
5) The chemical in the drug is cheap and has been widely available for decades. Apparently to make it commercial, they are claiming they have a special formulation.
Re:Rember (Score:5, Funny)
That's probably the real reason Fermat never finished his last theorem.
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Re:Rember (Score:5, Insightful)
For clarity and completeness I should add:
This is awesome news. My grandfather is suffering from an advanced state of this disease and it's horrible to see in what state he currently 'lives'.
He does not recognize me, or my brothers, or my parents (inc. his own son!).
Perhaps my first post (parent) sounded like I did not take this seriously. I guess it's more of a coping mechanism that got in action.
To all the scientists: please keep up this wonderful work! It'll probably be too late for my grandfather, but no-one should have to suffer like.
I hope that it won't be long before it helps to save many lives from being destroyed.
Re:Rember (Score:4, Insightful)
"He does not recognize me, or my brothers, or my parents (inc. his own son!)."
This just goes to show us how important our memory systems are in our intelligence and what an important role it plays in our lives.
Re:Rember (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you recently fired a bunch of US Attorneys, in which case losing your memory can be extraordinarily helpful.
quite the opposite (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, watching someone with advancing (but not yet devestating) Alzheimers can also show you how little memory is needed for intelligence. People can continue to cope in social situations for quite a while operating almost statelessly to guess at how they should behave. Only when you pay close attention do you realize the serious short-term memory deficit.
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The late Sir Martin Roth, a leading UK psychiatrist, always used to insist: "Alzheimers is NOT a disease of cognition". It has two separate components: the loss of personhood, and the loss of memory/cognition. In the questionnaire, one of the questions that best correlates with the onset of the disease is "... and for how long have you been depressed?"
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That's the stage I had the most problems with when my grandfather had Alzheimers'.
When he got to the stage where he thought he was a little boy again, he was much more cheerful. Again, for the family it was no pleasure to see that, but he had the time of his life
Re:Rember (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all I understand completely what you're saying and to a certain extend that is true.
But on the other side, his body is starting to fail and he is suffering from that. "Gradually, minor and major bodily functions are lost" as Wikipedia describes it [wikipedia.org].
It's getting somewhat better now, but recently he could barely breath, general pain all over his body and basically unable to swallow, combined with a cough he developed. He could not even eat Apple mush when helped.
Every now and then he has a 'good moment' and suddenly he can say more than 5 words without falling asleep again, but the general condition is suffering for him.
I know this could sound weird to some, but every time he closes his eyes I just hope that he drifts away to a better place and stays there.
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Sadly I understand.
My grandmother suffered extreme bursts of anger towards the family, it was horrible trying to deal with it. At times she believed that we were constantly trying to trick her by moving things around, lying to her about our identities, etc. When she passed away we were almost relieved, not having seen the worst of what was to come... I guess that goes a long way to describing how horrible this disease really is.
I cannot explain how relieved I am that I may never have to experience it myself
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I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother. It sounds heartbreaking. With our statistical analysis of the questionnaire results, what became clear was that alzheimers was a disease where (1) the sufferer lost their "personhood", and (2) the sufferer lots their cognitive faculties. You clearly experienced the first part. It's a shame that current FDA regulatory approval only take into account effectiveness for point (2).
Re:Rember (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but I do work in health care, on a Memory Care Unit, specifically. The MCU is designed for people with many forms of dementia, our most common diagnosis being Alzheimer's. I am sure you know many of the ugly symptoms of this disease. Confusion, loss of memory, loss of fine motor skills, deteriorating ability to perform activities of daily living, eventual death, etc. This drug may sound like a godsend, but think about it for a moment.
If your loved one breaks down crying several times a day because he or she can't tell where everyone is or where they are, if he goes into violent rages because he thinks he is being held against his will, if he lives in a constant state of fear because he knows something is wrong but he can't figure out what it is, if he tries day after day to go home but his captors refuse to et him go, causing him to fear for his life... do you really want a drug that will keep him in that state, somewhat permanently?
At best, wait until the affected person progresses to a state of Alzheimer's that is more comfortable for him or her -- around stage 5 (out of 7 total) people forget that something is wrong and they happily live their lives in total confusion. Then start the drug therapy. But stalling people's progress in a state that makes them absolutely miserable is not a miracle drug's miracle cure. It's torture.
Check out http://www.iatbdementiacare.com/index2.html [iatbdementiacare.com] I worked with the guy who runs the site and wrote the book on Dementia Possible Care. He is crazy insightful and smart when it comes to caring for people with Alzheimer's. Trust me, the $20 for the book will serve you tremendously.
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Think about it this way, if the drug halt further onset of Alzheimer's as they claim, the value of it as a first treatment before they reach the stage you describe is immeasurable.
It this is the miracle drug, the next step is early diagnosis before there is too much degeneration of the mind.
Re:Rember (Score:5, Insightful)
No, definitely not. You raise a valid point and I understand it completely.
My parent post should be seen more in the light of 'progress IS finally being made'... perhaps one day we can label it a disease that can be prevented.
Not just for 'everyone out there', but I have to admit also from a slightly selfish perspective:
My grand father was a fish salesman for his entire life. All the Omega 3 fish oil he has ingested wasn't enough to prevent it.
Then there's my father. We (mother, brother, me) are not sure if it's his current stress level, but in the last few months he is less 'sharp' than he used to be and his memory does fail him every now and then.
He's 57 and the idea alone that he might be heading for the same road is very terrifying to say the least.
And my brother and I are also starting to fear that we might have inherited a genetic disposition for this disease.
Personally I love learning.. I'm an addicted to knowledge and I'll pick up a book in bed even if my body is almost robbing me of my consciousness by force.
The idea that 'everything that I am' might one day start to slowly degrade freaks me out. Euthanasia is a word that comes up in this context if this situation might start to become a reality in a (hopefully) very distant future.
Ch ch ch changes (Score:2)
The idea that 'everything that I am' might one day start to slowly degrade freaks me out.
Everyone declines. Everyone dies. Nobody gets out alive. Such is life on Earth.
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"Everyone declines. Everyone dies. "
Yes, true, true.
But there's quite a difference between what I shall call 'normal decline' and 'Alzheimer induced decline'.
It's normal that ones body will start to function less well... but also losing ones mental functions?
My grandfather is 86 now. His mother reached the high age of 96.. and she was sooo sharp. Definitely not one you could fool. Her son, now 10 years younger is just a shadow of who he was.
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Re:Rember (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nice to point out there are many types of dementia other than Alzheimer's - my grandpa has stroke induced dementia caused by bleeding in the brain and doesn't seem capable of generating any new long term memories. Barring another stroke, it is unlikely he will ever change from his current stage (which happens to be about the anger and confusion stage, but I'm not sure if he has a specific ranking - my mom is a nurse and more on top of that sort of thing). The worst problem for him is he lost most of his m
Re:"Rember" is methylthioninium chloride? (Score:5, Insightful)
In what way is this not science? Hypothesis 1: Compound A is effective against disease X. Falsified. Hypothesis 2: Compound B is effective against disease Y. Falsified. Hypothesis 3: Compound C is effective against disease Z. Not falsified. Perform double-blind tests and find a dosage that is safe and effective. Sounds like science to me.
How would you conduct a search for safe and effective drugs? If you have a better way, I'm sure pharma companies would be all ears!
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The basis of 20th century psychopharmacology was in the discovery that certain dyes affect the brain in profound ways, so this hardly seems like a stretch to me. (See "The Creation of Psychopharmacology" by Dr. David Healy if you're curious.)
Furthermore, as someone with a chronic, debilitating disease whose causes are not known (Crohn's Disease), I've learned to embrace new treatments where they're found, even if they make no sense in the context of the body of existing knowledge about the condition. Indeed
So what's your point? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:"Rember" is methylthioninium chloride? (Score:5, Informative)
I should say that Claude Wischik thinks he *does* know what causes Alzheimer's disease. He's sure that tau tangles cause it. He's spent the past twenty years accumulating evidence and trying to convince people of the fact, but it's been hard because of the entrenched scientific dogma that amyloid causes it. The success of this drug finally is a vindication.
You're absolutely right, though, it was a case of trying lots of chemicals. At least, the larger pharmeceutical companies have been trying hundreds of thousands of chemicals from their libraries. A smaller company like TauRx can only manage far fewer.
But what's needed is a test-tube test to judge whether your chemical works. Previous attempts have judged whether their test chemicals work to prevent Amyloid buildup, and so they skip right over the useful ones. Claude Wischik realised that the test-tube test should be judging whether a drug works on tau tangles. This test-tube assay was the first key invention.
After that, you need an animal test to judge whether the drug works in animals. The second key invention by TauRx is a transgenic mouse where you can make it selectively express tau aggregates. They created mice with alzheimers, watched them make their demented way around water-tanks looking for firm ground, and then showed that Rember improved their condition.
You're right to ask about the temporary remissions. The clinical trial lasted 19 months and had 321 patients -- not a short trial! The test results had a p-value of 0.2%, i.e. there's a 0.2% chance that the improvement was due to the common random fluctuation rather than the drug's effect.
Odd facts about the BBC article: (Score:3, Interesting)
But what causes tau tangles?
Fraud? In my opinion, at the very least the BBC story is very badly written. In my opinion, there are elements of fraud. If I were the manager of "Emma Wilkinson, Health reporter, BBC News" I would review her work to try to discover if she has been taking money to advertise drugs. I would consider firing her, or at least re-assigning her t
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"He who toys with the most dyes, wins."
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"The drug is known as 'rember.' "
Too bad even though it stops Alzheimers, it causes dyslexia...
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Rember is a much better name than Member.
I always thought remember was a strange word... I don't member anything, so how can I possibly RE-member it?
Either way, I'm glad I don't have to worry about hearing my dear old grandfather say "hold on son I have to grab my member" when we are headed out of the house. And god forbid grandma tells the ladies in her bridge club that she loves member, she takes two at a time, and they are actually easy to swallow!
Here's to you, great pharmasutical drug namer, thank you
Can it reverse dementia? (Score:2, Informative)
While the article says that the disease was halted in 300 trial patients, it's not quite clear that the effects of the disease can be reversed. So those in the early stages have perhaps gotten their lucky break, but many who have already progressed down the road to lunacy are still without reprieve.
I'm glad to see such progress being made, and more importantly that aluminum cans and deodorant have been vindicated. Seriously though, I'm turning Japanese isn't just a song anymore, it's a long gone daddy in th
Dementia != Alzheimer's (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, that's awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow, that's awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
It's hard to think of a scarier disease than one where you slowly lose your mental faculties.
Ebola [wikipedia.org]
Re:Wow, that's awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Judging from the number of spelling errors in the above post, I think it's safe to say that I am already being gradually robbed of at least one of my cognitive functions.
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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.
On the contrary, I think it is only a recent development that we can see psychological pain as being as real or more real than physical pain. It is not so long ago that mental problems were casually dismissed by most as being 'just in your head'.
The point I'm trying to make is that modern society is improving in this regard, rather than degrading.
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Apparently you've never talked to any one of the large number of men in America who saw combat in either World War II, Korea, Vietnam, or any of the other myriad police actions we've been involved in. I think the older generations are very well aware that there are things worse than painful death; being the one who didn't die can be a horrible, horrible experience.
Anyone who grew up in the 20's or 30's, or the 40's or 60's and 70's and saw the wounded who returned home, missing arms and legs, hands, eyes,
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If it just ends there, then sure there are far far worse things than death.
BUT if we have an immortal soul and we "kind of remain as we are", then eternity is a bit too long for an immortal but _imperfect_ person.
Hands up those of you who are perfect and can handle an eternity of existence.
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Ebola has, what, a 40% mortality rate, and it's over one way or the other in less than two weeks.
Alzheimer's, in contrast, has (until now) a 100% mortality rate and takes *years* of horribleness.
I'll take Ebola, thanks.
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Dementia is a pretty bad way to go. The end stage is probably not so bad for the person with it (just bad for everyone around who cares). But the months where you know you are malfunctioning bit by bit can be pretty depressing.
What scares me would be to not lose all my mental faculties but instead "just" be trapped without sight or sound or m
Re:Wow, that's awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Its nasty, I worked in Alzheimers care for years.
What's worse is the routine treatment of Alzheimers patients with anti psychotic drugs, Most of my time as a nurse in that field was spent undoing the damage caused by such ill advised prescribing of chemical straight jackets to deal with minor behavioural issues.
If this drug can stop Alzheimers from getting worse once diagnosed I'd be happy, both professionally, and selfishly (I want Pratchett on this stuff NOW).
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I've already posted in this topic anyway, but I wish there was a mod option that is something like 'very grateful and respect'.
I salute your and your colleagues SirShmoopie!
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I agree with you entirely, we need to do more to learn how to deal with the emotional and communication issues caused by AD and other dementias that lead to behavioual problems. Treatment with anti-psychotics is disgraceful but it's easy to see how it happens.
These advances in treatment are great for those who will benefit (largely the younger onset cases) but will not prevent the majority of dementia that occurs in the very old without much relationship with tau-related disease. We will see in the future
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He suffers from Alzheimer's Disease. She has it! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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There's way more scarier things in my opinion. By the time they experience severe issues, it seems they have lost the capability to realise the suffering.
Now losing your body's functions while still being mentally fully aware, and suffering from excrutiating pain, I find that scarier.
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When studies showed a link between aluminum and Alzheimer's, that was enough to get me to stop drinking anything in an aluminum can and to stop wrapping my sandwiches in aluminum foil. I don't know if there's a real link, but it's not the kind of risk I'm going to take. Aluminum isn't good for you anyway, so it can't hurt to cut down your intake.
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If you want to reduce your risk of dementia, the best advice is to simply live healthily and be socially and intellectually active. Just as much dementia is caused by vascular disease as is caused by classical Alzheimer's disease, and being active (probably, we're not totally sure yet) increases your brain reserve so you can sustain more damage to your brain while retaining high levels of function.
While this treatment appears to be an important breakthrough you can't rely on it for prevention since it will
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Really? I thought if you really want to reduce your risk of dementia, you have supersize McD meals for every meal every day.
>99% of people sticking to this diet plan will never get dementia or cancer.
It works even better with Bacon.
Mmmmm. Bacon.
Of course the side effects might be a showstopper for you.
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If your high salt sugar and fat diet leads to a stroke then you have at least a 1 in 3 chance of ending your days with dementia of some sort (high blood pressure and cholesterol cause strokes and mini-strokes and are also thought to directly lead to Alzheimer's disease). So not only will you die young, you're alse likely to die disabled and demented.
There is a serious message there. There's no point thinking 'I don't want to get old so I don't get dementia', because if your lifestyle is unhealthy you'll s
Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
Now what's that drug called...?
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"Member" or something. And it's blue. And it's for when people get older...
I'm pretty sure I used some last weekend, but whatever happened was a little confusing, and I was sore afterward.
Video games... (Score:4, Interesting)
Thank your dad for his research for all of us - this is one of the worst ways to go.
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", but EVERY one of us is going to wind up with carpal tunnel."
From wikipedia:
"The term 'carpal tunnel' is also used quite commonly to refer to 'carpal tunnel syndrome' which is a condition where the median nerve is compressed within the tunnel and causes pain and/or numbness of the wrist/hand, never proven to be the result of repetitive motion such as painting or typing. It has been shown to be associated with obesity, hypothyroidism, diabetes, pregnancy, family history, rheumatoid arthritis and wrist shap
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So, expect blizzard to get hit with class action lawsuits for WoW?
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Can you post a link on the relationship between video games and Alzheimer's? Or do you mean we will all get fat and die of heart disease before we are old enough to get Alzheimer's?
my dad is smarter than your dad (Score:2, Funny)
oh yeah, well my dad...
Oh dear (Score:2)
I got the day of month wrong and occasionally feel depressed. It says I have minimal cognitive impairment.
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Yeah. And mine said I have no signs of dementia. Clearly this test is fubared!
(why do I have to wait 7 mintues between posts)?
Disclosure: I made the online questionnaire... (Score:3, Interesting)
BTW if you want to get into the fun stuff answer question 1 incorrect and question 2 correct and hit submit.
On the sad side if you answer questions 1 and 2 correct and then forget the rest of the questions you don't get hit with having some dementia and just a boring all is probably fine screen.
Rember is Methylene Blue (Score:5, Informative)
Andy
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Maybe is is the Spice (Score:2)
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I was going to write "well... if I had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, I'd love for 'long term' to be something I'd need to worry about", but thinking about it more, this is more a "stop you getting worse" drug than a "make you better" drug, so the earlier you start taking it the better. And if Alzheimer's can have it's roots 30-40 years in the past as the article suggests, maybe long term toxicity is something to consider...
Are the really early onset cases of Alzheimer's the same
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I also vaguely remember that one practical use for medical grade methylene blue was as an antidote for carbon monoxide poisoning [ncl.ac.uk], since it's one of the few not-so-toxic substances which binds to hemoglobin more strongly t
Thanks (Score:2)
I have nothing useful to add to this discussion except to send your father a Thanks for working on things like this. I love my job in IT, but my job will never have as big an impact on humanity as folks like your dad.
beta amyloid (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:beta amyloid (Score:4, Informative)
I am not a Doctor (for a couple more years), but...
I think that Alzheimer's is probably a confluence of different things instead of just a single disease. It could be that the plaque build up does not directly cause Alzheimer's, but that it creates an environment more conducive to the real disease agent's functioning. Or it could be that they are both expressions of an underlying pathology that as yet escapes us -- they're found together not because one causes the other but because they're both caused by the same thing.
I remember seeing some research a few months ago that showed that treating Alzheimer's patients with drugs to increase insulin sensitivity seemed to have some benefit, suggesting that the disease could be a third form of Diabetes.
I really do wonder if it should be Alzheimer's Syndrome instead of disease. It seems that there are several different causes of the condition, at least for the moment, which either contribute to the degeneration or could be the direct cause.
Re:beta amyloid (Score:4, Informative)
Somebody get hold of Pratchett (Score:3, Insightful)
He was looking for a high-end brain specialist in neurochemistry at last report. Subby's dad fits the bill.
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My brain hurts [youtube.com]
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I went to the library to do some research regarding a cure for Terry, but all I got was a banana.....
Other ways to prevent Alzheimer's (Score:2)
I've been working for years to prevent Alzheimer's with the medications currently available [bbc.co.uk] and it's working great for me!
Sad memories (Score:2)
My Great Aunt was the first female high school principal in the city in which I grew up. She was both witty and strong-willed, and achieved success in both her personal and professional lives.
She passed away from Alzheimer's, perhaps the most degrading, saddening, awful disease that I can imagine. In a sense, it is a fate worse than death -- it robs 'you' of *you*. It's torturous for the afflicted -- there was a period of a few weeks or months where my Great Aunt would wake up every day and have to be re
Scary (Score:2)
Alzheimer's is one of my worse fears in life, both for me and for loved ones.
Slowly losing your mind and not being able to do anything about it is terrifying. I guess the only solace one might have is after a certain point, you don't realize it's happening.
Is it patentable? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] also notes:
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.
Probably has something funky done to it (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the toughest problems when developing drugs for the brain is crossing the "blood-brain barrier". For instance, neurotransmitters will not cross the barrier, so we can only prescribe drugs that affect them, as opposed to prescribing doses of neurotransmitters themselves.
I am 100% sure this is patentable, it is not as if nobody knows about methylene blue; and possibly they have patented a way of getting the drug directly into the brain.
But yes, unpatentable drugs are a real big problem. One of the dr
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Yes it is patentable, and TauRx holds several patents around the drug. It's not just the chemical itself. You can also patent the formulation, the test-tube tests, the "use of chemical for a specific purpose", the transgenic animal tests...
Terry Pratchett (Score:2)
Does this mean fewer dupes? (Score:2, Insightful)
Too bad for the editors this won't be available for a few years.
Shame on you, funny people (Score:2, Insightful)
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If I cried every time something bad happened in the world, I'd never stop crying. Humor is the only way to actually cope with it all.
Laughing is FORBIDDEN! (Score:3, Insightful)
Shame on you making jokes about this dreadful disease.
My dad seems to have Alzheimer's - he now lives in a veteran's home, often doesn't know who his kids are, or that he has any, who his wife is, etc. It seems like his greatest point of clarity is that he doesn't want to be in the home, so we have to make excuses every time we leave there without him. Plus he had some recent dental issues (all his upper teeth are falling apart) - my mom arranged for him to get dentures, but he had a habit of taking them out and now he's lost them. She won't be getting him
Aging in general (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to think that aging was a very complex set of events. Most of the people here do as well, as you can see by reading other peoples comments. I actually still do. but the graph at the end of the explanation page has me at least curious:
http://www.tau-rx.com/quiz/tangles.html [tau-rx.com]
Squarely 100% of the people are at stage 1 by 85. 50% are at stage 3 or higher.
Keeping in mind that: "correlation is not causation", and all appropriate memes for the case:
Do you feel that
Good news for me (Score:2)
Who cares? It won't be free to everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just another huge money grab for big pharmaceutical companies. Why should you guys get to make any money off of this? All you did was cure Alzheimer's disease. Why should rich people get to avoid dementia when the poorest can't afford it? Shouldn't everyone get dementia equally?
When are we going to stop these big rich drug companies from making these obscene profits for merely curing diseases and plagues?
[Evil socialism off]
I actually hope you guys succeed and make billions. If I get Alzheimer's disease someday, it's nice to know there might be a cure, even if I have to pay you for your effort to find it.
Alzheimer's Research even worse than mentioned.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:tested? (Score:5, Informative)
Phase 1: safety at various dosages
Phase 2: small test of efficacy and determining proper dosage
Phase 3: larger test of efficacy
It is still years away from the market. There was a screw-up in the formulation of the highest dose in this study, and the lowest dose had no effect, so only the middle of three doses tried had any effect. I found that out here [suntimes.com]
Re:tested? (Score:5, Informative)
See this [wikipedia.org]
Re:How is it administered? (Score:4, Informative)
It was administered in pills. The world's supply of methylene blue largely comes from a factory in china, but TauRx wanted much higher purity for their drug, so they invented a new process for manufacturing it and oversaw production in a new factory. The methylene blue is put into pills and taken orally.
There were difficulties with formulation. It had to do with the problem of getting the right dose to the brain, and not having it get digested. Also there was a problem (I can't remember which way round) about acid/base conditions. Maybe it was that the stomach acid wanted to oxidise the drug, so it had to be mixed with a reducing agent so it lasted long enough to reach the brain? I'm afraid I worked on the questionnaire side, not on the chemistry....
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What happened is that they went to present their results at the ICAD 2008 alzheimer conference in Chicago. The ICAD committee selected Rember as one of the "top presentations" at the conference, and organized all the PR and news briefings.