Do New Alzheimer's Drugs Get Us Closer to Solving the Alzheimer's Disease Riddle?

[nitram]

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticl...4_etid5953283&uac=312119AN&impID=5953283#vp_2 .

 

[Neveradullday!]

This article seems to argue that targeting amyloid plaques doesn't seem the best way to treat Alzheimer's - the plaques being an effect, not a cause of the thing. In effect the scientists have been shinning up the wrong lamp post.

So much money spent, no doubt, still ******* in the wind.
It proposes a 'mind gym' preventative approach. Sudoku anyone? - not convinced myself.

 

[Lawson58]

It’s a bit if the old ‘Use ir or lose it’ slogan.

 

[Neveradullday!]

Yet d seems no respecter of intellectual talent. One reads on this forum of professors and the like coming down with it. Maybe using their brains in the wrong way. Or a few different causes.

Perhaps we are only in the foothills.

 

[Neveradullday!]

In effect the scientists have been shinning up the wrong lamp post.

Or I could have said, unbolting the wrong chandelier.

 

[Palerider]

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticl...4_etid5953283&uac=312119AN&impID=5953283#vp_2 .

The link pertains to the new drugs for specifically the treatment of Alzheimer's Disease and the fact that they are not going to be the answer everyone hopes they will be -which is essentially true, they won't (in short). The article offers an alternative which is not entirely new but it also misses more fundamental findings around brain plasticity another potential strategy which is not a cure, but rather aims at prevention. I think the author is right about the current status on immunotherapies for AD but wrong to channel prevention at only one method that being cognitive reserve when brain plasticity also has a part to play. This seems simple but both cognitive reserve and brain plasticity themselves pose issues in whether they can be achieved -none of this is so simple as these researchers claim and for lots of many complex and interacting reasons.

This is a complex phenomena, Alzheimer's is probably one of the most complex diseases to crack. There are two main schools of thought one is by prevention and the other by trying to achieve cure by pharmacological means or at a minimum halting or slowing of progression.

 

[researchnut]

This article seems to argue that targeting amyloid plaques doesn't seem the best way to treat Alzheimer's - the plaques being an effect, not a cause of the thing. In effect the scientists have been shinning up the wrong lamp post.

So much money spent, no doubt, still ******* in the wind.
It proposes a 'mind gym' preventative approach. Sudoku anyone? - not convinced myself.

I agree with you. I have read about new research that takes a different approach.
It involves a process called gene silencing / or gene editing using mRNA.