Posted on 07/30/2008 5:09:28 AM PDT by Straight Vermonter
A new drug halts the devastating progress of Alzheimer’s disease, say British scientists. It is said to be more than twice as effective as current treatments. A daily capsule of rember, as the drug is known, stops Alzheimer’s disease progressing by as much as 81 per cent, according to trial results. Patients with the brain disorder had no significant decline in their mental function over a 19-month period. ‘We appear to be bringing the worst affected parts of the brain functionally back to life,’ said Dr Claude Wischik, who led the research. It is the first time medication has been developed to target the ‘tangles’ in the brain that destroy nerve cells, leading to deteriorating memory. The drug helps to disrupt this process, preventing the formation of new tangles and loosening those already created. Last night the findings were hailed as the biggest breakthrough in the battle against Alzheimer’s since 1907.
< snip >
The trial was carried out by a team at the University of Aberdeen, led by Professor Wischik, who 20 years ago discovered the ‘tau protein’ which makes up the tangles. ‘This is an unprecedented result in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease,’ he said. ‘We have demonstrated for the first time that it may be possible to arrest progression of the disease by targeting the tangles that are highly correlated with the disease.
< snip >
Images of the brain showed rember had its biggest effect in the parts linked to memory, where the density of tau tangles is greatest, with better blood flow to these areas. The drug works by dissolving the tangle of tau fibres which releases waste products that kill nerve cells, and by preventing the fibres from becoming tangled.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Wow, I hope this is true!
This may be of interest to the FR folders.
Can you ping your health list?
This sounds great! It seems to restore functionality to those that have already suffered from debilitating effects from Alzheimer’s.
£2.50-a-day drug Aricept, there are concerns over whether it would be funded on the Health Service.
If you had the choice of paying about $5 a day or having your mind go away why wouldn't you pay? Why should whether or not their fellow citizens are forced to pay for it be the deciding factor? Can you imagine someone saying "Oh I'm sorry, I'd rather have Alzheimer's than fork over the £2.50 a day out o me own pocket."
That's a long time.
Thanks for posting.
Health/life BUMP!
Someone in my family had it bad, and I lived with it as a child. If this drug reverses Alzheimer’s, but has a side effect that makes you grow a second head, it’s still worth it. Alzheimer’s can be horrible.
Great news.
Thanks for posting.
Should be a warning to every stinking Liberal on earth,...their precious socialistic heath care refuses REFUSES!! to pay 2.50 pounds a day for Aricept!
I don’t want to pay for anyone’s Aricept, but when these liberal goons vote in socialism you’d think at least their communist leaders would have the balls to fork over the dough for drugs! Europe! What a bunch of a-holes!
Way too late for my Mom I’m afraid, but for us 5 children our chances of getting it are higher than normal. We are praying for a breakthrough. Seeing my Mom nine years now in a nursing home slowly fade away from us is heartbreaking. That is no way to go, and I would not want to put my family through that if it happens to me.
The lauded British health care system - free health care for everyone, as long as treatment is well under $5 a day.
Obama wants to bring this to you.
Along with higher taxes on the hardworking "rich." I think under the Obamessiah we'll be
The British must be just like the Canadian system (as told to me by a Canadian). Both are great as long as you don’t get sick.
dude that sounds desperately sad and your mum is in my prayers. i cant imagine what it is like for your family but i truly wish you the very very best..
it truly makes you appreciate how normal ‘huge problems’ people have on a day to day basis are so so unimportant...
good luck and God willing your and your family will have the good days ye so richly deserve.
it does make me realise in some cases in drug trials and i know how important their are but i truly feel there should be a way of getting access to drugs like this if families are prepared to accept the obvious risks.
Read later
Seen it myself, it's heartbreaking, and of course, no way to go.
What? A pill?! NO embryonic stem cells?! Shocking!! /s
Rember?
Well, if it works, it should be named Remember, shouldn’t it?
It is heartbreaking. But it is especially cruel if people believe these stories. The UK papers always carry exciting new developments that fade away and are never heard of again, so do not get your hopes up.
It must be the way they keep people believing in the NHS and prevent them from rioting.
See for yourselves and try to follow up these stories a month later. I keep posting the warnings and to date, nothing has come to pass that has proven me to be anything worse than a skeptic.
I have had so many relatives and neighbors lost to this, as well as our loss of Ronald Reagan, that I wish as much as anyone for it to be true.
http://www.google.com/search?q=rember
Rember is a Mac OS X application that tests Random Access Memory.
Cool. I don’t suppose anybody is going to note that the pill is not made from aborted baby embryos.
Yes, but many won’t remember waiting for it. :-)
It won’t work, just another pharmasuitical hype until it gets pulled because it’s killing people, they don’t even know what the cause is, give me a break.
Rember?
Ok who forgot the em?
/ticket please
Unfortunately I concur with other skeptics that this latest breakthrough is hype. We will see a lot of these "cures" come out as Alzheimers becomes more and more prevalent and fears increase.
What happened in 1907 that was more important?
The race to prevent the protein build up in the brain as well as reducing it has being going on for some time. It looks like some one has found a successful compound to work against the proteins. This is a hot research topic in biochemistry and chemistry research departments.
I talked to a psychologist involved in alzheimer’s research recently and he told me he expects to see medications like this on the market in the next five years.
Does it work postmortem??
Lost my mom to that dreaded disease prayers to you and your mom Don’t feel bad if you wish she would just go its normal
This does seem too good to be true, but I’d like to give you a little hope. Drawsing, it may not be able to help your father since he has progressed in the disease. However, I do know that there is a great focus on protein build up in the brain of alzheimer’s patients. Brains of alzheimer’s patients have this protein around the brain, which first causes inflamation, then damage. There are chemists, biologists, and medical researchers testing different inhibitors to see which ones work best with the least amount of side effects. It could be that someone in the UK found an effective inhibitor.
Quite true.
Only if Obie-Wan Obama administers it.
If he is elected trust me we are all gonna get it administered
If Rember will be available in Britain in 2012, then considering the FDA gauntlet it will have to run here, jeez, it should be available here in the U.S. by say ... about 2020 if we’re lucky?
But not to worry, by then we’ll have an almost bankrupt socialized health care system, so they won’t be able to afford to give it to us peasants.
Wow, great promising news.
Yep...too far out for my 87 year old mother.
And then they can with hold it for another five years and we won’t remember why we wanted something from them.
If this drug is Elan’s, then this might be BS.
Elan is down 50% in today’s stock trading on disappointing results for its alzheimer’s drug.
Imagine where we could be in the fight against this diease if we’d spent a fraction of what was wasted on AIDS research.
And probably for my 72-year-old father.
You got that right. Even here on FR where people should know better, when the subject of Alzheimers comes up there always seems to be a few inconsiderate people who poke fun of it with a joke. Thankfully this thread seems to be free of them.
What?
My Mom still knows me, but she hardly speaks a word anymore during visits. You may get a simple yes or no if you ask her a direct question, but more often than not the response is just a smile and a blank stare. On the last visit she surprised me though by touching my head and saying “I Love You”.
It is so unbelievable, that at 79 she cant carry on a conversation, cant feed herself, cant get out of bed, cant walk, cant even switch channels on the TV – and then I know other people her age who play golf, fly their own airplane, spend time with their grandchildren, take their dogs to the beach and just do the normal things we all take for granted. I so often think it’s so unfair that my 6-year old son will not know the real Grandma, but then I keep reminding my self we are all just here for a very short while, and real happiness, and our real home is waiting for us.
The Heaven that awaits my Mom and your Father is not harps, white robes, and never-ending boredom which is the perception that many people have, because that is what movies, cartoons, and paintings have showed us what it is like.
The Heaven John wrote about in the Bible is so full of wonders and mysteries that in our wildest dreams we could not imagine it. Certainly Heaven contains many surprises which we will never be able to comprehend in this life. And it will not be boring.
Think back to the one single best day of your whole life. Maybe it was your wedding, the birth of your child, your first trip to Disneyland, the anniversary cruise with your spouse, whatever. Now imagine each day in Heaven being that multiplied 100-fold, and the number of those days will be endless. That is what I firmly believe Heaven will be like. Is it no wonder that John saw All the Heavenly host worshiping the creator of it all.
I heard it said once that, - “as a Christian, the day I die will be the best day I’ve ever lived. But it won’t be the best I will ever live.”
That is what I believe and that is what gets me through each tough day.
Why not? Did you catch this?
Antihistamine improves Alzheimer's symptoms
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
I erroneously didn’t include you to comment# 49. Please forgive me, and check the link.
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