Hope for Alzheimer's Patients

A new drug has been developed by UK scientists which shows promise as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease.The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports the drug,CPHPC, removes a protein from the blood which is thought to play a key role in Alzheimer's.

Tests at the University College London found the protein also disappeared from the brains of five Alzheimer's patients given the drug for three months.Longer and larger scale clinical studies are under way.

The protein - serum amyloid P component (SAP) is always present in both the sticky clumps (plaques) and the tangles of nerve fibres that are found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease and are thought to damage healthy cells.The protein prevents these damaging formations from breaking up and it also promotes the formation of the amyloid protein which forms the dangerous plaques.There is also some evidence that SAP itself can directly damage brain cells.

Two of the big potential advantages of CPHPC are that it is not broken down, once inside the body,and it has a very specific action.It does not interact with the cells at all ,thus reducing the risk of side effects.

Although researchers expected to see a drop of SAP in the patients' blood, they were taken aback at the dramatic effect the drug had on the brain.Laboratory tests revealed the molecular process underpinning the effect of the drug and the way SAP accumulates in the brain with Alzheimer's disease.

The study confirmed that use of the drug - and the removal of SAP from the brain , had no side effects on the patients.

Although longer study is necessary ,scientists are excited with what they have discovered so far.They didn't anticipate the drug entering the brain and affecting it directly and they are very pleased that there are no side effects.

There may be further encouraging results from a study of caffeine in relation to Alzheimer's.It appears that it helps to prevent Alzheimer's.Large test groups of individuals have been studied in several countries,including Canada.Those who regularly drank coffee had a lower occurrence of the disease.An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.