September 08, 2014

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

Trish Vradenburg calls for increased Alzheimer's funding, pharma's innovation problem, new data from the UK reveals 42,000 new early onset dementia cases, and Lilly funds a lawsuit to overturn a decision from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that denied coverage for an imaging agent to be used in diagnosing Alzheimer’s (read more).
 

Must reads

  • A September 7, 2014 The Washington Post letter-to-the-editor by USAgainstAlzheimer's co-founder Trish Vradenburg underscored the need for increased funding for Alzheimer's research. According to Trish, "We also critically need more research funding. The National Institutes of Health will spend about $565 million on Alzheimer’s research this year. This is far less than it spends on cancer, HIV/AIDS and heart disease. And it’s only about one-quarter of the amount that leading scientists believe that the NIH must commit to maximize the chances of reaching our national goal of finding a cure by 2025.Congress should start closing the gap by funding an additional $100 million for research this year. It’s just the tip of the iceberg of what’s needed if we’re going to find a cure for this deadly disease." 
  • A September 6, 2014 CNBC article examined the pharmaceutical industry's innovation problem. According to the article, "While the number of new treatments hasn't really dropped off, but they are being developed for smaller numbers of people, and it is still difficult and expensive to get them to market.Regulation is more onerous than ever, and the typical final-stage submission of a medicine to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration runs to more than a million pages. The landscape of medicine is changing, with a move away from tradition small molecule drugs (that's pills to you and me) to biological drugs: antibodies or human proteins. These have the advantage of being easier to prove that they might work in early stage trials – but at the moment there are certain conditions, such as Alzheimer's, which they won't be able to treat because they don't act directly on cells…One way the industry is trying to tackle the problem is by sharing more information about their clinical trials and early-stage research – a tricky business in an industry whose lifeblood is intellectual property, and where companies fiercely guard early-stage research. An increasingly vocal section of the industry is arguing for greater co-operation and sharing of data."
  • A September 6, 2014 Salon article profiled the toll of Alzheimer's on one married couple. According to the article, "I’d found David’s eyeglasses. Now he was searching for his wallet. We were preparing to leave the house and drive to the Adler Geriatric Center in New Haven for another periodic check-up as we monitored the progression of David’s memory loss. We didn’t call it by its probable name: Alzheimer’s. There are many ways to deal with denial, tact perhaps the gentlest…I’m remembering this, but it’s still very present, so I’ll write it in a fictional present. David is sitting on the sofa holding a book. He’s reading; that is, he’s underlining every blessed sentence, page after page. He reads his memoir, more moved by it than when he wrote it. He feels it more keenly, because his beleaguered intellect can’t be a buffer. “Did this happen?” he asks me. He’s as vulnerable as a child. I’m grateful that this man who forgets that he forgets has a kind heart. He still loves to teach. Listening to Beethoven one morning at breakfast, he looked at me and said: “If you stay with it, you can go with it, and if you go with it, you can take it.” He was smiling and in that moment he was full of acceptance and courage.It took my breath away."
  • A September 6, 2014 The Telegraph article reported that a new report finds "that 42,000 people are now estimated to be suffering early onset dementia, including thousands of cases among those in their 40s, and more than 700 cases among those in their 30s." According to the article, "The figures, due to be published on Wednesday, come from a state of the nation report by the Alzheimer’s Society, the London School of Economics and King's College Institute of Psychiatry, which will show the cost of dementia to the NHS and social services…The new estimates suggest that of the 42,325 cases of early-onset dementia in the UK, 21,519 cases are in men while 20,806 are in women. Around 32,000 of the cases involve those aged 60 to 65, with 7,700 cases among those in their 50s, 2,010 cases among those in their 40s, and 707 cases among those in their 30s, the figures show."
  • A September 5, 2014 Wall Street Journal article reported that Lilly is funding a lawsuit to overturn a decision from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that denied coverage for a Lilly imaging agent to be used in diagnosing Alzheimer’s. According to the article, "In reaching its decision, CMS cited a lack of evidence that the agent, called Amyvid, could improve health outcomes. As a result, CMS greatly narrowed the potential use of the agent, dealing Lilly a significant setback. Now, Lilly is fighting back. The drug maker is funding a lawsuit that was filed this morning against the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and CMS by three people who want to force the agency to overturn its decision. Without coverage for Amyvid, they argue, they may not learn the true cause of symptoms suggesting a cognitive decline, according to their lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C."
Research, science, and technology
  • A September 6, 2014 Newsweek article reported on the use of young blood to treat Alzheimer's disease. According to the article, "More recently, scientists have started to shed light on the mechanisms of bloody rejuvenation. In 2005, Thomas Rando at Stanford University in California and his team reported how they induced muscle and liver damage in the older mice and found that, after plumbing them into the blood supply of young peers, the old tissues healed normally. Yet when old mice were connected to fellow old mice, they healed slowly. Get top stories emailed to you each day. So was born the idea that old blood somehow prevents repair in old age and that mysterious factors that are abundant in young blood could reactivate parent cells – stem cells – for the ­treatment of degenerative diseases such as ­Alzheimer's or muscular dystrophy…Next month, his team at Stanford will give a transfusion of blood plasma donated by people under 30 to older volunteers with moderate to mild Alzheimer’s. Transfusions of old blood have been performed countless times before but this time they will, with Rando acting as advisor, compare cognitive function before and after the transfusion of blood from a donor of known age. As the long history of the elixir quest illustrates, it is best to be cautious. There are vast numbers of ingredients in blood so it seems doubtful that GDF11, Actin A and macrophages alone hold the secret of youth.There are also theoretical risks to explore, for example concerns that these factors could make it easier for cancers to become established. Still, many are sanguine that we may be approaching a future where a cocktail inspired by young blood could at least improve the quality of life of the elderly, even if it does not deliver the immortal promise of that long-sought elixir."
 
Surviving Grace