Alzheimer’s treatment fully restores memory function (2015)(sciencealert.com)
sciencealert.com
Alzheimer’s treatment fully restores memory function (2015)
http://www.sciencealert.com/new-alzheimer-s-treatment-fully-restores-memory-function
10 comments
Research appears to be ongoing
http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2016/11/03/on-path-to-alz...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2016/11/03/on-path-to-alz...
Apparently they still haven't been able to translate the treatment to work on humans.
Also, it hasn't yet been proven that the treatment itself is completely safe for the brain.
Also, it hasn't yet been proven that the treatment itself is completely safe for the brain.
And it doesn't have to be - the side effects are to be weighted against the benefits.
Exactly. Once your brain stops working you've got nothing to lose and many people would rather take a 10% chance of living over a 100% chance of dying. It's the same with cancer, you try everything there is and even extreme side effects can be tolerated.
I wouldn't go that far. I know a number of people (myself included) for whom there is a threshold for sideeffect vs longevity. As a chronic pain patient, even now that's are treatments possible, but I would be unable to keep my job, or even enjoy much I currently do. How valuable is life when you can't take part in it?
I would rather die than live with Alzheimers.
The scary thing is that we can't understand what it feels like to have Alzheimer. Once progressed you become unable to judge the situation like you are used to. The world looks different from a patient's perspective.
Having worked in a nursing home, the outlook someone with Alzheimer's has in not pleasant. It's confusing and, in the early stages, you're aware of everything you love and the understanding of your place in the world slowly slipping away.
It's not some peaceful slip into senility and oblivion... it's more like a sawtooth graph of waxing and waning awareness, punctuated with extreme frustration, and terror.
I've only had contact to patients experiencing the calm phase. It must be hell slipping in and out of consciousness and realizing for a short moment what is happening until it vanishes again. It's stuff for nightmares.
I know what it is like to have lost a favorite book and look for it in vain for days before the love wears off. If I had that feeling every day, just the feeling alone would cause my mind to break down. Ever remember having a great idea, but not remember what the idea was?
however it has been proven that Alzheimer's is completely unsafe for the brain.
Seems too good to be true. Can someone put this into perspective? Is it promising?
Briefly, the authors repeatedly, transiently opened the blood-brain barrier (BBB) of an animal model of AD using scanning ultrasound. They observed that AD-like behavioral and brain symptomology was reduced in the treated animals. They suggest that the effects may be related to potentiating bloodflow to the brain and thereby enhancing clean-up of AD-related pathology.
The challenges going forward are described in their limitations section:
"At this stage, several hurdles have to be faced for SUS to be considered for application in human patients. In addition to the limitation presented by the animal model used in our study, it needs to be considered that the human brain is much larger than that of a mouse. Also, the thicker human skull presents an obstacle that needs to be factored in when parameters are defined that have the envisaged biological effect in the absence of tissue damage. There may also be the necessity to use one of several cranial windows to access the human brain. Also, if one were to apply SUS in humans at the prodromal stage before overt symptoms of AD were present, the safety of this approach would need to be monitored in real time. This could be facilitated by the recent development of advanced methods, such as passive cavitation detection, which is currently being evaluated in both rodents and primates (29). To avoid potentially excessive immune activation in a clinical setting (30), the ultrasound treatment regimen could possibly be done stepwise, covering one brain area at a time.Whereas we only coupled ultrasound with microbubbles, previous studies in rodents evaluated ultrasound for the delivery of therapeutic agents, such as antibodies (31, 32), viral vectors (33), and dextran of different sizes (9, 10). One study targeted Ab using a few entry points for delivery and only a single treatment (34). Because the effect on Ab plaques was very modest, the authors of this study suggested that focused ultrasound would best be suited as a delivery tool, for example, to boost the uptake of peripherally administered anti-Ab antibodies (34). Our results, however, demonstrated that repeated SUS treatment of the entire mouse brain was sufficient to markedly ameliorate the pathology of Ab-depositing mice as analyzed histologically, biochemically, and behaviorally.Our study highlights the potential of SUS treatment as a therapeutic approach for AD and possibly other diseases involving protein aggregation. However, this does not rule out the possibility that it could also be used as a vehicle for drug or gene delivery, given that the BBB remains themajor obstacle for the uptake by brain tissue of therapeutic agents from the circulation (9)."
In summary, it's an interesting approach, but I'm not holding my breath.
The challenges going forward are described in their limitations section:
"At this stage, several hurdles have to be faced for SUS to be considered for application in human patients. In addition to the limitation presented by the animal model used in our study, it needs to be considered that the human brain is much larger than that of a mouse. Also, the thicker human skull presents an obstacle that needs to be factored in when parameters are defined that have the envisaged biological effect in the absence of tissue damage. There may also be the necessity to use one of several cranial windows to access the human brain. Also, if one were to apply SUS in humans at the prodromal stage before overt symptoms of AD were present, the safety of this approach would need to be monitored in real time. This could be facilitated by the recent development of advanced methods, such as passive cavitation detection, which is currently being evaluated in both rodents and primates (29). To avoid potentially excessive immune activation in a clinical setting (30), the ultrasound treatment regimen could possibly be done stepwise, covering one brain area at a time.Whereas we only coupled ultrasound with microbubbles, previous studies in rodents evaluated ultrasound for the delivery of therapeutic agents, such as antibodies (31, 32), viral vectors (33), and dextran of different sizes (9, 10). One study targeted Ab using a few entry points for delivery and only a single treatment (34). Because the effect on Ab plaques was very modest, the authors of this study suggested that focused ultrasound would best be suited as a delivery tool, for example, to boost the uptake of peripherally administered anti-Ab antibodies (34). Our results, however, demonstrated that repeated SUS treatment of the entire mouse brain was sufficient to markedly ameliorate the pathology of Ab-depositing mice as analyzed histologically, biochemically, and behaviorally.Our study highlights the potential of SUS treatment as a therapeutic approach for AD and possibly other diseases involving protein aggregation. However, this does not rule out the possibility that it could also be used as a vehicle for drug or gene delivery, given that the BBB remains themajor obstacle for the uptake by brain tissue of therapeutic agents from the circulation (9)."
In summary, it's an interesting approach, but I'm not holding my breath.
I saw Alzheimer's take my grandma. That has to be worse than cancer, but not by much.
Both my grandmothers. It's brutal - from what we can tell in retrospect both of them were probably very aware of it, possibly for 2-3 years, but terrified of admitting to it.
One had a breakdown when her husband was going into hospital for a minor operation and she was terrified she wouldn't be able to take care of herself. The other had to be tricked to come in for an evaluation because she was scared of being left at the hospital.
Both lived for years after they stopped recognising anyone or reacting to stimuli, and the worst part to me was that both my grandfathers ended up spending years putting their own last years on hold to care for someone who no longer showed any signs of remembering who they were.
For all intents and purposes they were gone, but because they were still physically alive, it locked people in this waiting pattern. One of my grandfathers pretty much spent all his waking hours sitting next to his wife in a nursing home from he turned 80 until ca. 90. When she finally died, he was able to do other things again, but then died two years later of heart failure (he'd had heart problems since his 50s)
One had a breakdown when her husband was going into hospital for a minor operation and she was terrified she wouldn't be able to take care of herself. The other had to be tricked to come in for an evaluation because she was scared of being left at the hospital.
Both lived for years after they stopped recognising anyone or reacting to stimuli, and the worst part to me was that both my grandfathers ended up spending years putting their own last years on hold to care for someone who no longer showed any signs of remembering who they were.
For all intents and purposes they were gone, but because they were still physically alive, it locked people in this waiting pattern. One of my grandfathers pretty much spent all his waking hours sitting next to his wife in a nursing home from he turned 80 until ca. 90. When she finally died, he was able to do other things again, but then died two years later of heart failure (he'd had heart problems since his 50s)
My grandmother had it too. In my aunt's words, after she passed: "It's like losing my mother twice - first the person dies, then the body"
When I see stuff like this I have to say I am amazed at how precise some drugs are.
Somewhat related I was watching a video about protein motors and how they work. They are small structures that walk on microtubules (as mentioned in the Alzheimer's article) inside cells. There are many types but some walk using hinged protein feet.
The narrator explained how his team invented a drug that helped to make one step in that process better. They made the hinge part of the foot work normally giving it more strength. It was a single phosphate molecule added to this step.
It was incredible to think one small part of a protein motor the "ankle" part of the foot of that one protein motor on a microtubule inside a single cell had some help.
I explained it horribly here is the video https://youtu.be/9RUHJhskW00?t=1946
edit: phosphate not sulphur
Somewhat related I was watching a video about protein motors and how they work. They are small structures that walk on microtubules (as mentioned in the Alzheimer's article) inside cells. There are many types but some walk using hinged protein feet.
The narrator explained how his team invented a drug that helped to make one step in that process better. They made the hinge part of the foot work normally giving it more strength. It was a single phosphate molecule added to this step.
It was incredible to think one small part of a protein motor the "ankle" part of the foot of that one protein motor on a microtubule inside a single cell had some help.
I explained it horribly here is the video https://youtu.be/9RUHJhskW00?t=1946
edit: phosphate not sulphur
..in mice...
Have to start somewhere. This is a big deal for a number of reasons. This provides a non-invasive treatment avenue for a very common (35M worldwide and expected to double in 20 years) CNS affliction and shows incredible curative properties in animal models.
This is real science.
This is real science.
It is a huge deal... agreed.. And I'm a real scientist. just saying, let's not get carried away with the journalistic headlines.
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One of the more intriguing things in this work is that they used a physical process. This makes it much more likely to work across in other animals/humans.
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http://www.biotechniques.com/news/Breaking-Boundaries-Ultras...
> Leinenga is also trying to apply the technique to sheep since their skulls are similar in thickness to human skulls. The larger sheep brain is also closer in size and shape to human brains as well. Having a similar model is important for developing ultrasound technology, because the physics can differ in a mouse versus a human due to the difficulty of transmitting through a thicker human skull.