USA2 SPOTLIGHT

A May 16, 2017 Marginal Revolution article cites an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, “The Failure of Solanezumab – How the FDA Saved Taxpayers Billions," defending the FDA’s high standards which prevented the Alzheimer’s drug from being approved, and saved taxpayers billions in Medicare payments. The FDA has been historically apolitical and it is not their job to approve or fail a drug based on its effect on taxpayers. Offering a different take, a paper authored by ResearchersAgainstAlzheimer’s“recommends that the FDA approve new medicines that demonstrate a proven benefit on at least one therapeutic endpoint – either cognition or function. The current FDA standards require a new drug to show benefits on both proven endpoints, an unnecessarily challenging hurdle the authors say may be inhibiting investment in new Alzheimer’s treatments.”

A May 10, 2017 USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging post announced William Vega as the newest member of the UsAgainstAlzheimer’s Board of Directors. He will play an essential role in increasing investment in Alzheimer’s research, creating a faster and more diverse clinical trial infrastructure and addressing the disproportionate effect of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias on communities of color. According to UsAgainstAlzheimer’s Co-Founder and Chairman, George Vradenburg, “We are thrilled that Dr. Vega, a trailblazer in the fields of aging, minority health and public health research, will leverage his passion and public health expertise to advance our national commitment to cure Alzheimer’s by 2025.”

MUST READS

According to a May 15, 2017 The Pharmaceutical Journal article, getting drugs across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) could be key to developing more successful therapies to treat disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, and several methods are being investigated. This is a major challenge because the BBB is evolution’s mechanism for protecting the brain and may remove drug molecules. “The BBB is like a regular cell barrier on steroids,” says medicinal chemist, Paul Trippier, from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

RESEARCH, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

A May 12, 2017 Psychiatry Advisor article reported that development of amyloid plaques in the brain characteristic of Alzheimer's disease is more likely to be associated with vascular risk factors in midlife, than with those accumulated in later years, based on results from a study (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC)–Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Amyloid Imaging) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Between 1987 and 2011, study participants completed a series of four inpatient health evaluations, as well as a visit for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and PET scans between 2011 and 2013.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

A May 16, 2017 BBC News article spotlighted a decision by the Royal College of Nursing's annual Congress (in Liverpool) to allow nurses who have dementia to continue their work for as long as they are able. Jo James, a dementia nurse from London, suggested developing a strategy for supporting colleagues with dementia. According to James, ”A dementia diagnosis is likely to signal the end of a nurse's professional life. We have robust laws in place against discrimination - but dementia is often seen as the exception to the rule and stigmatized… We don't want people to hide their diagnosis from their managers because they're frightened they will lose their livelihood… We should obviously never put patient safety at risk - but we can nurse in other ways.”