Breakthrough shot appears to reverse Alzheimer’s effects in minutes
US researchers say a new therapy, currently used to treat arthritis, appears to reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease within minutes.
The study, published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation, details an Alzheimer’s treatment based on administering a therapeutic molecule to a single patient. It highlights the importance of certain soluble proteins, called cytokines, in Alzheimer’s disease, observers say.
Testing was performed on one patient, an 81 year old physician, who could remember facts such as the current year and the state he lived in within 10 minutes of a single treatment, according to California researchers. He also could name five animals, and performed better on an arithmetic test. Before the shot, he couldn’t recall such details, they said. After the treatment he was also “noticeably calmer, less frustrated and more attentive”, the authors wrote.
“It is unprecedented that we can see cognitive and behavioural improvement in a patient with established dementia within minutes of therapeutic intervention,” said Sue Griffin, PhD, editor-in-chief of the journal. “It is imperative that the medical and scientific communities immediately undertake to further investigate and characterise the physiologic mechanisms involved.
“This gives all of us in Alzheimer’s research a tremendous new clue about new avenues of research, which is so exciting and so needed in the field of Alzheimer’s,” she said.
In the newly-heralded study, researchers focused on one cytokine, called tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF), which is a critical component of the brain’s immune system. Normally, TNF finely regulates the transmission of neural impulses in the brain. But the researchers hypothesised that elevated levels of TNF in Alzheimer’s disease interfere with this regulation.
The authors say their study documents a dramatic and unprecedented therapeutic effect in an Alzheimer’s patient: improvement within minutes following delivery of perispinal etanercept, which is etanercept given by injection in the spine.
