Get Started

New Alzheimer’s drug shows early promise

The long quest for a medication that works to treat Alzheimer’s reached a potentially promising milestone on Wednesday.

share this post:

Why it is in news?

  • The long quest for a medication that works to treat Alzheimer’s reached a potentially promising milestone on Wednesday.
  • For the first time in a large clinical trial, a drug was able to both reduce the plaques in the brains of patients and slow the progression of dementia.

All about Alzheimer

  • It’s a progressive disease that destroys memory and other important mental functions.
  • Also called: senile dementia.
  • Symptoms-Requires a medical diagnosis -Memory loss and confusion are the main symptoms.
  • Occurances-Very common-More than  10 million cases per year (India)
  • Requires a medical diagnosis Lab tests or imaging not required Chronic: can last for years or be lifelong Brain cell connections and the cells themselves degenerate and die, eventually destroying memory and other important mentalfunctions.
  • Memory loss and confusion are the main symptoms. No cure exists, but medication and management strategies may temporarily improve symptoms.
  • Ages affected
    People may experience:
  • Cognitive:
  • mental decline, difficulty thinking and understanding, confusion in the evening hours,
  • delusion, disorientation, forgetfulness, making things
    up, mental confusion, difficulty concentrating, inability to create new
    memories, inability to do simple maths, or inability to recognise common
    things Behavioural: aggression, agitation, difficulty with self care, irritab
    ility, meaningless repetition of own words, personality changes,
    restlessness, lack of restraint, or wandering and getting lost
    Mood: anger, apathy, general discontent, loneliness, or mood s
    wings
  • Psychological: depression, hallucination, or paranoia
  • Also common: behavioral symptoms, inability to combine muscl

    About experiment

    • Aside from a couple of medications that can slow memory decline for a few months, there is no effective treatment for Alzheimer’s, which affects about 44 million people worldwide.
    • It is estimated that those numbers will triple by 2050.
    • The trial involved 856 patients from the U.S., Europe and Japan with early symptoms of cognitive decline.
    • They were diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment or mild Alzheimer’s dementia, and all had significant accumulations of the amyloid protein that clumps into plaques in people with the disease.
    • In the data presented on Wednesday, the highest of the five doses of the new drug ”” an injection every two weeks of 10 mg per kg of a patient’s weight ”” reduced amyloid levels and slowed cognitive decline when compared with patients who received placebo.

    Source

    The Hindu, Apollo Hospitals
more posts: