Alzheimer's Preventative Drug Hope

Drugs in Protecting against Alzheimer’s Disease

In recent years, the struggle against Alzheimer’s disease has been increased and researchers are achieving a better understanding of this mind altering ailment though we seem to be far from a cure for it. Various drugs have been detected by scientists that could help in protecting against Alzheimer’s disease and act like statins for the brain.

Experimenting on worms, researchers from University of Cambridge recognized drugs that could prevent the initial step in brain cell death. They now plan to match with drugs having precise stages of the disease. Experts state that it is of great importance to discover if these drugs could be safe for humans. Statins are taken by people to decrease the risk of developing heart ailment and the research team at Cambridge state that its work could have discovered a possible neurostatin to ward off Alzheimer’s disease.

 Instead of treating the symptoms of the disease, neurostatin can be utilised as a preventative measure in order to stop the condition in the first place. For instance the cancer drug bexarotene has been found to stop the first step that could lead to the death of brain cells in worms naturally programmed in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

Discover More on Mechanics at Every Stage of Development

The researchers, intheir earliertrials in humans, had tested the drug at a later stage of the ailment to check if it would clear amyloid plaques from the brain though the trials had been unsuccessful. Head of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, Dr Rosa Sancho had stated that scientists should find out precisely how the drugs tend to work prior to any clinical trials. She added that they will now need to see if this new preventative approach could halt the earliest biological events in Alzheimer’s and keep damage away in further animals and human studies.

This early research in worms recommend that bexarotene could act earlier in the process to interfere with amyloid build-up. Prof Michele Vendruscolo, senior study author from the University of Cambridge, said while writing in Science Advances, that the research team wanted to discover more about the mechanics of every stage of the development of the disease.

Body – Natural Defences in Protecting Itself

She mentioned that the body tends to have a variety of natural defences in protecting itself against neurodegeneration, but as we seem to age, these defences become progressively impaired and could get overwhelmed. By understanding how these natural defencesworks, we could be capable of supporting them by designing drugs which behave in a similar manner.

 The director of research and development at the Alzheimer’s Society, Dr Doug Brown said that it was still early days. Bexarotene had been given to nematode worms genetically programmed to develop Alzheimer’s disease, as part of the research and the way the drug worked at molecular level had been analysed. As per the researchers, Bexarotene seems to work by suppressing primary nucleation reaction, which is a process that starts the formation of malfunctioning proteins known as amyloid fibrils and accumulation of amyloid is a symbol feature of Alzheimer’s.

Bexarotene seems to have several side-effects when utilised to treat lymphoma like skin complaints, sickness and headaches and that we would also need to be sure that it would be safe for people suffering from Alzheimer’s.