English
The Beginning of a Breakthrough in Treating Alzheimer's
Posted on Oct 17, 2013 by Ruth Loftus
Average life expectancy in the UK is now about 80 years – slightly more for a women and less for a man. This is an increase over the last two decades of around five years for both sexes – however the unavoidable fact is that increasing age almost always brings with it an increasing risk of ill health – the incidence of cancers and cardiovascular disease all become greater after one passes the age of sixty five. However, although a degree of physical decline is seen as an unavoidable consequence of old age, for many people, the fear and anxiety associated with a falling away of mental faculties is even more acute.
News of possible medical breakthroughs for conditions such as Alzheimer's disease possibly generate even more interest among older people – and their prospective family careers - as do new treatments for physical ailments and there has been a recent outbreak of just such excitement.
Before looking at that and its implications, it useful to understand what actually constitutes Alzheimer's – and just as importantly, what it isn’t. In it early stages, Alzheimer's sufferers do experience lapses of memory failure and have problems in finding the words they want to use. As it develops and progresses, the sufferer may become scared and frustrated by these increasing memory difficulties; may become increasingly withdrawn, as they lose of confidence or become anxious about communication problems; experience difficulty with everyday activities – such as counting their change when out shops or losing old habitual skills such as operating the remote for TV.
Alzheimers is a disease of the brain, With it there begins to occur within the brain what are called protein 'plaques' or 'tangles' and as a result, cells in the brain actually die. There may be a deficiency of critical chemicals in the brain which are themselves central to the effective transmission of information within the brain. These failings give rise to the symptoms that characterise the condition.
The most dramatic of the recently reported developments in understanding the disease has been heralded as being possibly one of the most significant improvements ever, but at the same time, there is considerable caution in predicting just how quickly the insights that it has produced might be translated into medication and treatment. The more cautious commentators are suggesting that it might even be a matter of decades for the real results of the work to become evident.
The fundamental feature of the latest breakthrough is that it appears to have identified a chemical intervention that can actually prevent the breakdown of brain tissue which is characteristic of a degenerative disease such as Alzheimer's. The research, which took place in trials on mice, is acclaimed by other scientists as having for the first time identified a means through which a neuro-degenerative process in a living animal might be delayed – this has implications not just for Alzheimer's but for other diseases such as Parkinson's and Huntington's.
The research was undertaken at the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit, based at the University of Leicester and concentrated on the natural defence systems that are inbuilt for brain cells. In certain circumstances, the brain cells will temporarily shut down some protein production as part of a defence against a virus. Diseases such as Alzeheimers have an effect which ‘mistakenly’ brings this shut down about but also prevents a natural restart and, with the loss of this key protein production and the resulting reduction in brain functioning, all of the characteristic symptoms of the disease begin to progressively become apparent.
The new research has demonstrated with mice that a chemical compound can be designed and introduced which means the false triggering of the defence mechanism doesn’t occur.
It is the fact that an intervention can now possibly be designed that has caused such excitement, as well as the fact that the same research may have implications for a range of other diseases. The compound that works for mice will not be one that is effective for human beings – and even with mice it has been seen that the chemistry used has an effect on the pancreas and caused mild diabetes. The significance is that it has given a green light for the process of determining the precise chemistry which will have the equivalent effect on humans. This may take time but there is now confidence that this should be achievable.
In the meanwhile what might you do to try to avoid Alzheimer's? The medical advice is in fact very familiar. Don’t smoke, keep physically active, eat a balanced diet with a good mix of fruit and vegetables and keep blood pressure and cholesterol monitored and under control.