Memantine, an FDA-approved drug currently used only for reducing the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease might help in stopping or delaying the progress of the disease if the drug is used before the symptoms appear, reports a new study. The findings of the study are published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia.// About 50 percent of people who reach the age of 85 will develop Alzheimer's disease. Most will die within about five years of exhibiting the hallmark symptoms of the disease - severe memory loss and a precipitous decline in cognitive function.
‘Identifying the patients who are at risk of Alzheimer's and treating them as a preventive measure with new drugs and possibly lifestyle adjustments would decrease the rate at which the silent phase of the disease progresses.’
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But the molecular processes that lead to the disease will have begun years earlier.Currently, there are no known ways to prevent the disease or to stop its progression once it has begun. But research at the University of Virginia offers a new understanding of how the disease develops at the molecular level, long before extensive neuronal damage occurs and symptoms show up.
"Based on what we've learned so far, it is my opinion that we will never be able to cure Alzheimer's disease by treating patients once they become symptomatic," said George Bloom, a UVA professor and chair of the Department of Biology, who oversaw the study in his lab.
"The best hope for conquering this disease is first to recognize patients who are at risk, and begin treating them prophylactically with new drugs and perhaps lifestyle adjustments that would reduce the rate at which the silent phase of the disease progresses.
"Ideally, we would prevent it from starting in the first place."
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"It's been estimated that as much as 90 percent of neuron death that occurs in the Alzheimer's brain follows this cell cycle reentry process, which is an abnormal attempt to divide," Bloom said. "By the end of the course of the disease, the patient will have lost about 30 percent of the neurons in the frontal lobes of the brain."
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The building blocks of the plaques are a protein called amyloid beta oligomers. Kodis found that when neurons are exposed to toxic amyloid oligomers, the channel, called the NMDA receptor, opens, thus allowing the calcium flow that drives neurons back into the cell cycle.
Memantine blocks cell cycle re-entry by closing the NMDA receptor, Kodis found.
"The experiments suggest that memantine might have potent disease-modifying properties if it could be administered to patients long before they have become symptomatic and diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease," Bloom said. "Perhaps this could prevent the disease or slow its progression long enough that the average age of symptom onset could be significantly later if it happens at all."
Side effects of the drug appear to be infrequent and modest.
Bloom said potential patients would need to be screened for Alzheimer's biomarkers years before symptoms appear. Selected patients then would need to be treated with memantine, possibly for life, in hopes of stopping the disease from ever developing, or further be developing.
"I don't want to raise false hopes," Bloom said, but "if this idea of using memantine as a prophylactic pans out, it will be because we now understand that calcium is one of the agents that gets the disease started, and we may be able to stop or slow the process if done very early."
Bloom currently is working with colleagues at the UVA School of Medicine to design a clinical trial to investigate the feasibility of using memantine as an early intervention.
Source-Eurekalert