Page 23 - Leisure Living Magazine Holiday 2018

Hope For Successful Treatment
Of Alzheimer’s Disease
By Theresa Bowen, Ph.D., Email - theesajb@gmail.com
Alzheimer’s was first discovered in 1906 and no real cure has been found so far. There are currently not any new drugs on the global market, at least not since 2003. But there are more than 400 clinical trials taking place. Over the years more than 190 compounds have been tested for Alzheimer’s disease but only 5 have been approved and marketed. New drugs today are usually a combination of two of the older drugs that the Food and Drug Administration has already approved.
Dr. Frank Longo, a neurologist at Stanford, proposes a different strategy for preventing the disease. He has touted that many promising compounds have eliminated the amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer’s in animals but success has not been tested in humans. He hopes his drug LM11A-31 could be instumental in making that happen. His drug is now in Phase II. Phase II is when the drug is tested in people with Alzheimer’s and has minimal side effects. If the trial goes well, as leading experts and Longo expect, the drug will be on its way to approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). LM11A-31’s purpose is not like any of the other drugs aimed at attacking and getting rid of the protein plaques. Instead of attacking the amyloid plaques, this drug aims to keep brain cells healthy and strong.
More recently PET scans have been performed to determine amyloid plaque detection in the
brain. The limitation of this technology is that amyloid detection can be present 20 years before dementia begins. This gives us a long time to intervene with treatment. Because there are 5 to 10 percent of patients that have all other signs of Alzheimer’s but no amyloid plaque detection, Medicare and other third parties will not pay for a PET scan. A PET scan can cost around $4000.00 but some people want the results so they pay out of pocket for this test. A tau scan is not available clinically at this time although PET scans are commonly performed for free in clinical trials.
Prevention strategies for Alzheimer’s are updated every month on exercise, diet, and sleep. In a recent study on the effectiveness of brain games or cognitive exercise it was observed that executive function does increase but there is no transfer to improving cognitive function like finding your car in a parking lot. There is a commercial version under development of a video game that patients try keeping a car on the road and after six months of playing an hour a day it did improve working memory. Dr. Longo speculates that if a purpose or passion is tied to a video game it may increase cognitive memory. He explains that 13 out of 18 studies show a decrease in the risk of dementia associated to a Mediterranean diet as opposed to a Western diet. Taking diet supplements such as Omega 3 and Vitamin E have no effect on cognitive memory. Vitamin D studies show that a very low level is not good but avoid taking larger amounts of this supplement. Your doctor can test your Vitamin D level. Patients with sleep-disordered breathing and disrupted sleep do test with higher levels of amyloid. Dr. Longo’s review of exercise and dementia risk supports that a brisk walk 30 minutes a day 5 days a week puts you at a 45% reduced risk of developing dementia. He summed up all the trials on people that actually had dementia (meta analysis) and found that cognitive function improved with exercise more than taking FDA approved drugs. He summarizes that if anyone wants to spend an hour a day toward preventing dementia choose exercise instead of sitting at a computer.
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