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Medicine

Breakthrough Ultrasound Treatment To Reverse Dementia Moves To Human Trials 167

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.
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Breakthrough Ultrasound Treatment To Reverse Dementia Moves To Human Trials

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 20, 2018 @10:56PM (#57840106)

    I wonder if such ultrasound machines placed inside Congress might help some of the demented souls in there. Quite a few Parliaments 'round the world might give it a shot, too.

    Demented, dementia, whatever.

    • I wonder if such ultrasound machines placed inside Congress might help some of the demented souls in there. Quite a few Parliaments 'round the world might give it a shot, too.

      Demented, dementia, whatever.

      I'd contribute to a kickstarter to install one in the Oval Office, that's for sure.

  • Maybe we can hide one in Donny's hair

  • by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @11:24PM (#57840170)
    Too bad my mom is 82 and treatment is about ten years away.
    • by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Friday December 21, 2018 @12:46AM (#57840334)

      You could buy an ultrasound device on ebay ($100-$1500), and apply it to her head. May need to mod it to increase its output, though. Of course since it hasn't had Stage 1 trials, safety is unknown.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 21, 2018 @01:43AM (#57840466)

        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.

      • by execthis ( 537150 ) on Friday December 21, 2018 @07:39AM (#57841124)

        Wait for them to show up on eBay for $10.99.

        It will happen.

        This whole thing breathes new life into the question "What's the frequency, Kenneth?".

      • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Friday December 21, 2018 @08:43AM (#57841290)

        They used a very highly focused ultrasound and more importantly injected the mice with a microbubble liquid. Without the microbubbles you would have to induce cavitation to get a mechanical effect on the plaque ... and that's a lot more destructive than the mild force of a bubble expanding/contracting.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I feel for you. The best that can be said is that she may be among the last to suffer from this horrible condition...

    • by Anonymous Coward

      AndyKron confided:

      Too bad my mom is 82 and treatment is about ten years away.

      I commiserate with you. My mom was 82, and suffering from increasingly-severe dementia, when she developed aspiration-mediated pneumonia, and died of exhaustion (which is what kills pneumonia patients), 21 excruciating days later.

      I have to confess that, as horrible an ordeal as that was for her, and as devastated as I was at her loss, I can't help but think that it was still a better outcome for her than actually dying of Alzheimer's itself. I've known end-stage Alzheimer's patients - most

  • by torrija ( 993870 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @11:25PM (#57840174)

    The article seems to be behind a paywall. There's an editorial on the article describing the main points at: http://atm.amegroups.com/artic... [amegroups.com]

    From that editorial: "Shimamura et al. demonstrated that a microbubble-enhanced ultrasound method successfully delivered therapeutic genes into the CNS with no evidence of brain damage". So it is not only ultrasounds that are required for this procedure to work, but some microbubble injection needed. I could not find any reference on the gas used for this microbubbles, nor their size nor how they generate them. Still sounds like a very promising treatment.

    • MOD UP (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 )

      Very useful summary with added detail and good article link. Thanks!

    • From that editorial: "Shimamura et al. demonstrated that a microbubble-enhanced ultrasound method successfully delivered therapeutic genes into the CNS with no evidence of brain damage". So it is not only ultrasounds that are required for this procedure to work, but some microbubble injection needed. I could not find any reference on the gas used for this microbubbles, nor their size nor how they generate them. Still sounds like a very promising treatment.

      Could the microbubbles be caused by ultrasonic cavit

  • Odd Choice of Target (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PseudoAnon ( 5437498 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @11:27PM (#57840186)
    Clinical medication/drug trials have repeatedly shown that removing amyloid clusters doesn't reverse dementia and usually doesn't even slow its progression. I won't get my hopes up, but it'd be wonderful if things go better this time. The target seems strange, but it sounds like there might be a little more to this approach.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Clinical medication/drug trials have repeatedly shown that removing amyloid clusters doesn't reverse dementia and usually doesn't even slow its progression.

      Do you have a citation for this? I am not aware of any drugs that significantly reduce beta amyloids, so how can we say that removing them doesn't work ... when we aren't removing them?

      I won't get my hopes up, but it'd be wonderful if things go better this time.

      Indeed. Dementia costs the American economy $200B annually. Worldwide, it costs more than $1T. When you consider the enormous benefits of a cure, it is obvious that dementia research is vastly underfunded, as is mental health research in general. Schizophrenia costs America another $100B annually, and autism costs $125B,

      • by PseudoAnon ( 5437498 ) on Friday December 21, 2018 @05:28AM (#57840848)
        Sure. Here's a link from a quick Google search:
        https://consumer.healthday.com... [healthday.com]
        There were other drugs with the same target in at least a few other companies' research pipelines at the time, but they all ended up also fizzling out without results. This particular link is suggesting that it might slow progression, but I was under the impression that that wasn't correct either for most people with the condition. Most pharmaceutical companies have moved on to looking at tau.
        • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Friday December 21, 2018 @08:58AM (#57841342)

          AFAICS those medicines could only dissolve the plaques in theory, in practice they didn't (except with topical application, which isn't really an option for humans). The mechanical action of ultrasound might break up the plaques sufficiently so those medicines would actually work.

          • It's looking to me like researchers have been able to dissolve plaques in the brain as well but that patients didn't benefit. I agree that the mechanical stimulation from ultrasound could be a potential game changer, but I'll still keep my hopes low. Here's some information about a drug called Verubecestat. The second link unfortunately requires an account to be able to read it.

            "The Phase 1 trial, reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine, recruited just 32 patients and was chiefly concerned
            • Was a while since I checked, it's ironic that Aducanumab failed to dissolve old plaques but is actually producing more promising cognitive effects.

      • I thought $200billion for Dementia per year in USA cannot be that high! But that is only $500 per capita and makes sense when each patient probably needs about $50,000 per year in care and drugs ( never mind unpaid family / friend support ).

        Totally agree underfunded. Good luck this trial.

        • Some of these patients go from being economic producers to economic consumers. Granted, the care of these people employs an army of people that may otherwise not have jobs. Let's how it plays out.
          • Granted, the care of these people employs an army of people that may otherwise not have jobs.

            This is a variant of the Broken Window Fallacy [wikipedia.org].

            The purpose of a job is to create goods and services, not "keeping people busy". Zero-sum jobs are not good for the economy, and the labor intensive nature of dementia care is a very negative thing with no silver lining.

    • by labradort ( 220776 ) on Friday December 21, 2018 @07:47AM (#57841146)

      He's right. Researchers over 10 years ago believed they had a chemical that would chelate with these proteins. Same idea. The experiment worked, and the symptoms were not touched. They found the proteins are tags that tell them there is presence of the disease, the protein is not the cause.

      Strange there are repeatedly massively funded research projects targeting the same solution that is known to not work. One wonders what is the real goal of the researchers? Possibly just job security.

      If you read the linked article carefully, it says the method works on mice brain models, not actual mice. What do you know, the theory backs the theory. Using the same model oriented methods, the moon model is made of cheese.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        he same model oriented methods, the moon model is made of cheese.

        Thats not fair. Models as used in drug therapies are necessary to both save expense on R&D and also to save the lives of countless animals from undue suffering during the 'what happens when X chemical interacts with Y structure?' phase.

        This press release is just that, and is someone asking for more funding. And a model of the moon is not going to tell us its swiss cheese, but without more information we might assume the entire moon is exactly the same as the surface.

        And that's 50% right with models of p

      • by qubezz ( 520511 )

        Your reading is ill-informed. A "Mouse Model" is a fancy name for a laboratory animal. It is a model because a mouse is also a mammal with a brain, a pancreas, 10 toes..., but there are still dissimilarities in morphology and chemical pathways that may produce results that do not translate to humans.

        Mice are a better "model" of human metabolism and chemical pathways that a flatworm or fruit fly would be. The same large-scale laboratory experiments done on even better "models", such large primates, may be v

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 20, 2018 @11:40PM (#57840216)

    Ultrasound can go 3-4 cm before the signal isn't coherent enough to reflect. This might be fine in mice, but they will have to stick the transducers into brains to work in people.

  • by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @11:50PM (#57840238) Homepage Journal

    Let's put aside the effects of the disease first, and it's impact on the patients body. I want to talk about just how fucked this thing is for the rest of slashdotters, and what the worst part about the disease is. It's greed.

    Let me rewind to 2 years ago. It was Christmas at my Grandma's. Grandma's really special to me, as a kid she fostered me when my druggy parents could not. She made me the man I am today, took me off the streets. Taught me things that would last a lifetime, like saying, "Please, Thank you sir, and no ma'am".

    She had also amassed quite a fortune, to the tune of what I'd later learn was $20 million dollars or so. Her sons never worked. They grew up thinking they were royalty of our town. Back to Christmas though.

    My father whispered to me, "This is the last Christmas we'll be having here, your uncle is going to put her in a home!" I thought he was joking. 20 years earlier, my uncle had talked her letting him be a trustee of a new trust. The trust gave him powers that in the event she lost mental faculty, he could "Do what is necessary for her care" A pretty broad statement.

    He had been shopping her to various doctors around town looking for one that would give her a diminished capacity declaration. Most of them refused, but the last few he met were more than happy to do it, and recommend she be placed in a secured memory facility. Basically a prison for folks with Alzheimer's. Some of these doctors did this without ever having met my grandmother.

    A letter was sent out to the family, that he was going to do this to her from the lawyer that drew up the trust.

    Thankfully the court was on her side. She wanted to stay home, and had always been told by my grandfather that's where she'll stay. It took 2 years of fighting, since he had access to her money. Ironic he used her own money against her to hire lawyer after lawyer. There was a compromise made, but it was in her favor for the most part. Uncle would not have conservator over her medical or financials. He would still be a trustee of the trusts, but under a yearly audit from the courts. He would pay all of her bills (including caretakers) and for repairs to her house.

    It was during that fight though that pained me the most. Him and his brothers would go over there and lie to her, tell her things to confuse her. While I was at work, they'd go over there and tell her I was the bad guy. Her story changed when she talked to the court investigator, but the investigator knew what was going on, as well as my team.

    Watching family lie and manipulate the affected is the most fucked part in Alzheimer's. It reduces what's called a persons susceptibility to undue influence. I'm not going to diminish the fact that my grandma's mental state deteriorated, but the stress of court, doctors, her sons trying to manipulate her (and scaring her at one point to draw a pistol on my uncle) accelerated her condition and left her in a state I can only describe as post traumatic.

    I hope this cure works. I pray it works. Been hopeful before.

    • by GerryGilmore ( 663905 ) on Friday December 21, 2018 @12:50AM (#57840346)
      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.
      • by Miser ( 36591 ) on Friday December 21, 2018 @09:47AM (#57841538)

        I'm going to undo all my moderation to post this.

        100% agree with you. I have known relatives that have had to spend down all their assets to stay in a "memory care" unit when they could no longer be legitimately safe at home. To me, it's total bullshit. If this happens to me, give me something laced with something else and let me go to sleep permanently. Also, a underground safe to hide cash, as well as a dead mans switch for folks to find it when I'm gone.

        It's horrible to see everything you've worked for just flushed down the toilet for you to "just exist". Horrible way to live.

        Here's hoping there's a cure. Or even a "stop" - i.e. if you start experiencing symptoms, get this treatment and it stops the disease in its tracks. Reversal would be a holy grail but I'm not holding my breath.

        • This is going to a morbid place, but when I was actively suicidal (depression), I amassed a "kit", it included sodium azide, the reagents to create H2S (and no I won't say what those are), and a gun.

          I am feeling much better now, (for the most part, I do have swings)
          But I did not get rid of my "kit", my wife doesn't even know about it. It give me peace knowing I have the ability to bail out if it is necessary, but I do worry about doing it unecessarily.
      • Yeah, my mom has advanced dementia, neither of us are rich but thanks to her and dad's pensions (remember those), social security, and insurance she can afford 24-hour care. Otherwise we'd be screwed. Even still, watching her slowly slide into oblivion has been hell.
    • Thanks for sharing your story.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Turned out she'd been letting my aunt railroad her for 40+ years. She ended up dumping all the estate things she hadn't had the balls to do herself on my mom as well, who ended up letting my Aunt get away with almost everything. The only major thing she got was a particular piece of furniture that family had brought out to her from her hometown that my aunt lost a coin toss over. Long story short she'd done her taxes for years BEFORE her faculties had gone and had cooked the books to look like she'd paid lo

    • Many moons ago I worked for a short while at a bank call centre. Many of the calls were family members trying to sneakily access old people's accounts. Of course that cannot be done without power of attorney, so I always referred them to their bank branch where the matter could be dealt with in person. I wouldn't even confirm if the account existed or not. They got so angry, but it was not my problem if they weren't prepared to go through the correct legal channels.
      • Oh and I also had an old lady on the line who had lost her husband a few years ago. She was really friendly but very confused and worried that she might not be able to pay her monthly bills. It was a sad, conversation but also very enlightening listening to the lady's stories for about 30 minutes. And in the end I was able to tell her that she had an account that she didn't know about with lots of money in it. Her husband had created a joint account and been saving it it.
    • My story is a little different; my dad put my mom in a nursing home after he could no longer care for her due to his own advanced age (eventually he joined her in the nursing home). He really tried though. I had a tiny one floor, one bathroom, hobble (still do) with no room, nor money to accommodate them, and while my siblings fared much better, they didn't either. I did visit every week, for 10 years, seeing her turn into a living zombie, unable to speak or acknowledge us for the last eight. That was h

  • I've heard the plaques are a defensive mechanism by the brain. Sort of, the brain coating itself in a protective layer when being damaged by environmental toxins or too much sugar exposure. In that case removing the plaques will hurt rather than help.

    Guess we'll see...

    • We're not designed to get that old, I wouldn't put much faith into naturalism. Especially if it's from keto-nutters. Skip the red meat, eat more blueberries.

      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        Riiight because of all the healthy vegans you see walking around. There is no place on earth a healthy human being can live off of the local plant life. It is a thing only made possible by specially preparing food in just the right ways and with ingredients transported around.

        Do eat more blueberries, as for red meat specifically, there is nothing wrong with that as long as you combine it with actual heavy exercise. Not cardio, heavy exercise, think 20 reps max insteasing weight instead of repetitions and le

        • Red meat time and time again comes out as increasing risks for a wide array of ailments, in normal weight people as well. There are no cohort studies for people on high intensity training specifically I'm aware of, but I'd say you're exceedingly optimistic for thinking it will somehow protect you from the negative effects.

          You don't have to be a vegan to cut back on red meat.

          • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

            "Red meat time and time again comes out as increasing risks for a wide array of ailments, in normal weight people as well."

            Correlation does not equal causation. The most recent study combining the available data from studies across the globe across two hundred years actually found high vegetable fat content rather than animal fats as the biggest contributor to heart problems.

            Red meat is higher in cholesterol, heavy exercise (heavy weight, not high intensity) triggers hormonal reactions that cause your body

            • "Red meat is higher in cholesterol"

              ~10% higher than chicken, ~80% lower than eggs. If you're that desperate for cholesterol eat an extra egg. More cholesterol, none of the heme iron.

    • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      Actually the plaques have been pretty solidly linked to Herpes simplex one. In other words, the cold sore version. Normally the blood brain barrier keeps it out of the brain but as we age it begins to creep in or at least that is the hypothesis.

      The virus has been shown to create the plaques, a correlation indicating someone with the Alzheimers gene and simplex one is 14 times more likely to get alzheimers. And finally there was recently a large scale study using anti-virals that target simplex one which sho

      • There are a lot of hypotheses. Some of them sound really good. It's possible more than one is right.

        A famous psychologist (known for her brain hemisphere experiments) once said "Yes, that theory, sounds right. I can come up with 100 theories that sound right sitting on the toilet. How do you PROVE it?"

        The fact that we cannot open up demented people and LOOK, that we can't open people every 10 years and watch the progression, etc. means were' stuck with animal models. I suspect we'll stumble on a cure f

        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          "And finally there was recently a large scale study using anti-virals that target simplex one which showed they drastically reduced the probability of developing it."

          The same way we prove anything else, by testing it. As indicated here in a large scale, long term study in Taiwan, on humans.

          "HSV-1 infections may be treated with a number of antiviral compounds such as valacyclovir. A study was done in Taiwan to assess whether administration of such antiviral compounds can effect the development of senile deme

    • So, as a rule of thumb, if you read X protects you from toxins and [common substance you don't need protection from, e.g. sugar], it is almost certainly woo.
  • by umafuckit ( 2980809 ) on Friday December 21, 2018 @03:48AM (#57840672)
    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 [theguardian.com]. 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.
  • I find it odd that this hasn't been mentioned in the comments already.

    Turmeric has the very useful effect of dissolving brain plaque.
    No need for expensive treatment.

    • Curcumin helps several things in the body, and might help Alzheimer's, but by itself it's not enough.
  • I wonder how this relates to the Radionics work [wikipedia.org] of Royal Rife [wikipedia.org].
  • by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Friday December 21, 2018 @10:01AM (#57841592)
    Those noises in my head are just trying to knock the plaque loose!
  • How is this possible, I was assured that medical advancement were only possible if we put corporations in control of medicine.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Wait ... does this work in general? Could you clear arteries with ultrasound instead of say quadruple bypass surgery?

    • There are numerous things - supplements and medicines - that reduce and even remove arterial plaques over time. These approaches should start early, because the more blockage that already exists the harder it is to remove it. Bypass surgery is very invasive and there's a lot of healing that has to take place after the operation. If it's possible to avoid bypass surgery by using chemicals or a stent, that should be done.

      If ultrasound works to clear arterial plaques, it would have to be used very carefully. I

  • This looks like the most promising treatment yet, and he missed this by just a few scant years, after donated heavily to Alzheimer's research before dying (or rather, deciding to die before becoming a mental vegetable).

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