July 18, 2019

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

USA2 SPOTLIGHT

A July 16, 2019 NBC Nightly News broadcast segment featured journalist, author and UsA2 advocate Greg O’Brien and his son, Connor. Connor remembers his father as the ‘life of the party,’ before his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Dr. Rudi Tanzi at Massachusetts General Hospital is researching the link between inflammation and AD. Tanzi recommends “SHIELD” to prevent inflammation: sufficient sleep, managing stress, social interaction, daily exercise, learning new things and a healthy diet.

MUST READS

A July 17, 2019 MedPage Today article reported from the AAIC conference in Los Angeles about latest research linking infection to Alzheimer’s disease. Opinions remain divided over this emerging theory. According to the article, “But associations seen in laboratory and epidemiological studies do not demonstrate causality, "and in fact, reverse causation must be considered more likely," said Todd Golde, MD, PhD, of the University of Florida in Gainesville. While neurodegeneration or other states "may very well enable slight reactivation of latent viruses present in many human brains" and there's strong evidence that an additional hit from an infection can impair cognition, there's no evidence for causality.” 

RESEARCH AND SCIENCE

A July 17, 2019 Drug Development Technology article spotlighted the AMBAR (Alzheimer Management by Albumin Replacement) clinical trial, which used plasma exchange, a combination of human albumin infusion and intravenous immunoglobulin, to try and stabilize Alzheimer’s disease progression. The Spanish healthcare company Grifols reported a 61% decrease in disease progression in patients with mild to moderate AD. According to the article, “When the three treatments arms in the trial were assessed separately, the CDR-Sb significance sustained a decline of between 65% and 71% at 14 months.”

CLINICAL TRIAL SPOTLIGHT

A July 16, 2019 Medscape article highlighted results of the edonerpic maleate phase 2 clinical trial to treat Alzheimer’s disease. At one year, the drug reduced cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) tau levels, but had no clinical benefit.“This drug has an interesting preclinical profile and a strong rationale for clinical testing in Alzheimer's. It is disappointing not to have shown any benefit on symptoms in a well-powered clinical study… We don't want to overstate it, but we saw an intriguing effect on CSF tau and phospho-tau — both were significantly reduced in the treatment group compared with the placebo group,” said study investigator Howard Feldman, MD of University of California San Diego School of Medicine.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

A July 17, 2019 Parkinson’s News Today article focused on a study from The Second Hospital of Baoding City in China, which found that an oral combination therapy helped people with PPD (Parkinson’s disease dementia) improve cognitive abilities and quality of life. The ‘cocktail therapy,’ including Aricept, Ginkgo biloba, butylphthalide (celery oil component) and oxiracetam capsules, taken over six months, was found to be safe. According to the article, “Results showed that people on the cocktail therapy had better scores across the three tests at six months in comparison to assessments made at the study’s start and at three months… Specifically, analysis of the different MoCA test components showed more significant benefits in visual-spatial ability and executive function, naming, attention, memory, and orientation with the combination treatment than with Aricept alone.”