Good news for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease

Research presented at an international conference on Alzheimer's disease in Chicago offers hope for the treatment of the devastating disease.

A phase II trial, of a drug called AL-108 in treating mild cognitive impairment (MCI), saw improvements on various measures of memory - MCI is the term used to describe the intermediate state between normal aging and the very earliest features of Alzheimer's.

The researchers from Duke University Medical Center, in North Carolina, say AL-108 targets the early abnormal brain changes in a protein called "tau" which are seen in the early stages of dementia.

The drug was given as a nasal spray over a 12 week period to 144 subjects, both men and women, age 55-85 years, at 16 centers across the U.S.

Dr. Donald Schmechel who led the research says a response was seen after just 4 weeks of treatment and a significant, improvement in short-term memory after 3 months treatment - the most common side-effect was headache.

Another study examined the brains of people with Alzheimer's who also had diabetes, and the researchers found that people in the study who took a combination of insulin and oral anti-diabetes medications had fewer Alzheimer's-related brain changes than others in the study.

The researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, say this could be a pathway for developing new treatments.

Dr. Michal Schnaider Beeri says previous research has shown that some people with diabetes have fewer brain lesions than non-diabetics and they suspected that treatment of diabetes with insulin and other drugs may have helped reduce the brain damage from Alzheimer's.

Dr. Beeri says their study examined the brains of 124 persons with diabetes and 124 without diabetes, and he suggests that the combination of insulin and oral anti-diabetes medications may beneficially influence Alzheimer's-related brain changes.

New research from scientists at the Mayo Clinic was of concern as it revealed much higher than expected rates of MCI in a large, older population.

A longitudinal study of people age 70 to 89 has found that MCI developed at about 5.3 percent per year and men were nearly twice as likely to develop MCI as women.

Dr. Ronald C. Petersen who led the study says this was substantially higher than expected.

The researchers say while people with MCI have ongoing memory problems, they do not have the confusion, attention problems, and difficulty with language but they are nevertheless much more likely to get Alzheimer's than the general population.

Experts say aging populations mean it is necessary to make significant advances soon in the treatment and prevention of Alzheimer's or it will become an overwhelming epidemic in many countries.