Archive for the ‘treatment’ Category

Early Alzheimers Treatment

Dec 5th, 11 / 0 Comments







We already know how important it is to see a physician and get an early diagnosis – and start taking appropriate meds to slow down the onset of Alzheimer’s. But there’s another side to the problem we rarely investigate and one I wish I had thought of or known about 8 years ago when my mom first started down this road.

It’s simply confidence.

The first reaction is one of denial – “I don’t forget things!” but inside you know you do. After a “certain age” we all worry about forgetting stuff and wandering down the road to this diagnosis. Confidence and fear go hand in hand.

The second reaction is one of losing confidence to go out – to engage with others because, well, because you’re going to make a fool of yourself forgetting something and “people will know”. My mom was an amazing faker and I’ve seen her have a long conversation with an old friend and them immediately turn to me asking, “Who was that?” Social skills kept her moving long after somebody with less skills would have been needing superised care. Even the social workers working with her were fooled many times until they got to the actual testing/memory scores and realized the issues (one of the rookies never did figure it out and we had more problems with that – but that’s another story).

The point today is that support groups and basic programes such as this one in the UK are really important for this initial stage of building confidence and helping individuals to remain engaged with their friends and family.

It’s far too late for my mom but if you have a loved one that’s just been diagnosed with Alzheimers Disease – do contact your local Alzheimer’s society and have them find a local program like this for you and your loved one.

support, treatment

Deep Brain Stimulation: Cure for Alzheimers?

Nov 28th, 11 / 0 Comments







Now here’s an interesting bit of research that actually may reverse Alzheimer’s disease or cure Alzheimer’s

It’s called “deep brain stimulation” (don’t try this at home) ;-) In simple terms, the brain is exposed in an operation, electrodes are inserted near the area of the brain you wish to stimulate, a battery is hooked up and inserted under your skin near the collar bone. This apparently is done under a local anesthetic and you’re conscious the entire time.

Is this Voodoo?

Apparently it has been used with some success on Parkinson’s disease and the stimulation interferes with the diseased pattern of nerve functioning – preventing the diseased brain areas from firing neurons in the stimulate areas. This allows the brain to compensate and develop healthy neural pathways while the diseased areas are incapacitated. It is also being investigated for both depression and Tourette’s Syndrome as well as being used for the Parkinson’s.

Dr. Andres Lozano at the University of Toronto has just done some preliminary research on six patients. The simple explanation is the hippocampus is the part of the brain that communicates between long and short term memory and is one of the first areas of the brain to be hit by Alzheimer’s. After one year of stimulation, not only was the problem prevented but the brains of at least two of the six patients had actually grown new cells (increases of 5 and 8%)

This is extremely interesting work but the prof cautions (and rightly so) that it is very early days in this Alzheimers research and they plan on doing a larger trial to collect more data.

Note this data has been presented at a conference but it has not been peer reviewed yet. The media picked it up on some news releases and that’s where it sits.

Interesting stuff – no Alzheimers cure but another possibility after more testing. Stay tuned.

research, treatment

Is Green Tea the Cure for Alzheimers?

Nov 7th, 11 / 0 Comments








It turns out that green tea just might have have the ability to cure Alzheimer’s disease. One of the ingredients in green tea, Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) apparently reduced the amount of beta-amyloid plaque by 60% in the test subjects when combined with a red laser light.

Thinking Voodoo therapy? Well, apparently a research team headed by Andrei Sommer at the University of Ulm in Germany showed that red lasers when applied to the brain drove water out of the cells. And if they could get chemicals into the blood stream near these cells, the water-starved cells would suck it back into themselves. (As an aside, it is notoriously difficult to get chemicals into brain cells – a self-defense mechanism we seem to have)

So when the compounds in green tea were taken orally and the red laser applied, the research team found the 60% decrease.

Red laser treatment alone reduced the plaque by 20%.

What isn’t clear (but heavily claimed by health food proponents) is whether there is any cure for Alzheimer’s using green tea without laser treatment. Or whether there’s any effect at all.

The jury is still out on this one folks but hey, green tea is good stuff and it doesn’t hurt you. This one falls into the “I don’t know but it can’t hurt me so let’s all drink it” category.

herbal, research, treatment, Uncategorized

Alzheimer’s Medication Conflict

Oct 31st, 11 / 0 Comments








If you’ve been following Alzheimers medication data or know what meds your loved ones are using, you’re likely familiar with Aricept. This is known as a cholinesterase inhibitor and works to stop the breakdown of cholinesterase – a chemical responsible for passing nerve signals around the body (you need good levels of cholinesterase and Aricept maintains it to slow down the onset on the disease)

But patients are also (quite often) given anticholinergic drugs that are used to treat gastrointestinal problems, allergies, urinay incontinence, depression and some nerve-system based problems such as Parkinson’s.

According to Dr. Denise Boudreau – the Associate Scientific Investigator at Group Health Resarch Institute in Seattle, “If someone is taking both types of drugs, cholinesterase inhibitors and anticholinergic medications, they will antagonize each other and neither will work.” The study was published online in the Journal of American Geriatrics Society finding that 37% of Alzheimer’s patients were also taking at least one other anticholinergic drug as well.

The good news in the study is that there was no rise in either death rates or the rate of hospitalization in nursing homes associated with this drug combination study.

Bottom Line

Drugs don’t work well if they’re combined but death or placement in nursing homes doesn’t increase over those not using the drugs. I suspect then it would be more a quality of life issue – incontinence or Parkinson’s symptoms for example not being treated because of the Alzheimers medication interaction.

medications, treatment

New Avenues for Alzheimers Medication Research

Dec 15th, 10 / 0 Comments







When it comes to treating Alzheimer’s patients and developing Alzheimer’s medicines, Alzheimer’s experts have long believed that the brain of Alzheimers patients somehow were producing excess amounts of the beta amyloid plaque and this “gummed up” the brain causing cell death and brain deterioration.

Research just report in Science by Dr. Randall Bateman first has shown the opposite. While it is early days yet, this research shows that it’s not the production of the plaque that’s the problem, it’s the elimination of it.

Turns out that plaque is produced by all of us but healthy individuals eliminate the plaque. Those with Alzheimers do not eliminate it. And plaque is somehow necessary for normal brain functioning. Healthy people produce the beta amyloid and it disappears in 8 hours. Those with Alzheimer’s get rid of it 30% slower than the healthy person.

The beta amyloid is necessary for electric transmission of nerve impulses but too much of it acts like a brake on the system. The buildup creates a slowing down and eventual dying of the brain cells.

So now the research and Alzheimer’s medications can investigate the disposal system for plaque – how it gets eliminated from the brain and what medications we might use to speed this up.

Again – early days in the testing and findings but an entirely new approach has been announced.

medications, research, treatment

Aspirin and Alzheimers

May 31st, 10 / 0 Comments







Dr. Hanneke Thoonsen, MD, Department of Neurology, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, the Netherlands has reported on a study that found a higher risk for inracerebral haemorrhages (bleeding in the brain associated with hemorrhagic stroke) with Alzheimer’s patients using aspirin versus those who did not.

She reported a clinical review of 2 other studies found similar results – in the range of 4% to 2% in those using aspirin versus 0% in those not using aspirin.

This risk has been described as falling short of recommending against asprin but certainly suggesting caution, reduced use of aspirin and requiring further study.

19th European Stroke Conference (ESC) May 26/2010 Aspirin in Alzheimer’s Disease: Relatively High Risk of Intracerebral Haemorrhage. Abstract 695

medications, treatment

Reversing Alzheimers

May 10th, 10 / 1 Comment








Up to now, reversing Alzheimers symptoms has been thought to be impossible. British researchers believe there is a chance that the brain cells that were previously thought to be dead can, in fact, be brought back to life before permanent damage sets in

Note this doesn’t repair brain cells after permanent damage has occurred. Researchers at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge researched the small axons that connect brain cells together.  The found that these axons started swelling and are damaged and die before brain cells die. This process of axon death can take up to four months according to the researchers.

Publishing test results in the journal “Brain” Dr. Michael Coleman suggested that drugs could be developed that would repair or bring these axons back to life if caught early enough. There would appear to be a window of opportunity to repair preliminary damage or reconnect the brain cells that are not yet dead.

Bottom Line

This is quite experimental work and no drugs or clinical trials are yet underway but it would seem to hold promise for future work in slowing, stopping or reversing Alzheimers disease. But at the present time, reversing Alzheimers isn’t possible.

research, treatment

Sleep Apnea and Alzheimers

May 10th, 10 / 0 Comments







In an interesting way, a treatment for Sleep Apnea may be a treatment for Alzheimers as well.

The Details

A report in the Journal of the Geriatrics Society reports that a study being done on seniors with sleep apnea, improved the cognitive function of those with Alzheimers.

Sleep apne treatments involve opening up the airways into the lungs with positive air pressure during sleep. This forces extra oxygen into the lungs in a non-invasive way.

The sleeper simply wears a small oxygen mask while sleeping.

Sleep apnea happens when the airways become blocked during sleep periods, cutting off breathing and the major symptom is extremely loud snoring,

Bottom Line

Seniors with sleep apnea should clearly be treated with positive air pressure systems and that improvements in the Alzheimer’s were seen after only 3 weeks of oxygen treatment.

No effect was seen on the placebo group in this treatment for Alzheimers Disease

lifestyle, research, treatment

Alzheimers Brain Chemistry PACAP27

May 6th, 10 / 0 Comments








Researchers at Saint Louis University have identified an interesting development in Alzheimers brain chemistry. In short, they’ve identified a way to actually get medication inside the brain.

You see there’s a layer surrounding the brain called the Blood-Brain-Barrier (BBB) that pretty much stops everything unusual from getting through to the brain. In normal healthy terms, this is a good thing. We don’t want our brains to get “sick” when we get a cold and the BBB stops bacteria and virus problems (most of them anyway) from reaching the sensitive brain. It keeps us ticking away even when our bodies are sick.

Researchers have identified a hormone (it’s actually called PACAP27 – a catchy little term) that is a general protector for the brain. What the researchers did in plain English was figured out a way to turn this protecting hormone “off” by adding another molecule to the material trying to get through the BBB.

They put a “key” into the drug so the drug could get through.

In their mouse trials, the researchers were able to disarm the BBB and deliver a treatment that had a positive effect on the brain functioning of the alzheimer’s-mouse subjects. The thinking is that this will allow other forms of treatment as well as Alzheimer’s brain therapies.

This material was originally printed in the Online Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism Read a summary here







research, treatment

Alzheimers Vaccine

May 6th, 10 / 0 Comments







A very promising Alzheimers vaccine seems to be coming our way and it appears to have some real effects.

Work being done at the University of California, Irvine has produced a vaccine that actually clears out the beta-amyloid plaques that have damaged the brain.That’s the good news.

The bad news is that while it clears out the plaque, function is not restored. So this means that if you get diagnosed and begin treatment early enough, you might be able to arrest development but not reverse the damage.

The vaccine essentially stimulates the brain to repair itself (which is a pretty darn good trick when you think about it and could be useful in a lot of other problems)

Apparently from what I’ve been able to find, the drug has to be given every three months by IV.

It is not yet available and human testing is ongoing.

I’ll be bringing you more on this as I can find good data.

medications, treatment