Kate Dyer-Seeley  

The week is coming to a close, wet leaves, pumpkins, and political signs liter my front yard.  The leaves need raking, the pumpkins need carving, and I wish the political signs could be packed away today.  If only we could vote and move on.  Instead, Alzheimer’s research (like so many other important issues) will stall out until next year. 

News came in today that Congress and President Bush have voted to postpone any new spending on medical research or health care initiatives for the next five months.  Additionally the Ending the Medicare Waiting Act that I’ve been working to help push through, will not pass this year.  The legislation has been sidelined until the new president takes office in 2009.  I’ll be working with the Alzheimer’s Association to help ensure the bill is reintroduced and finds additional co-sponsors next year.

In light of the knowledge that there will be no new funding increases, part two of my wrap-up of Dr. Carillo’s presentation will focus on the major clinical trials underway.  It’s important to note that these research initiatives have all been funded by the Alzheimer’s Association.  This means the money you donate when you participate in a Memory Walk or another event sponsored by the Association goes directly to fund these initiatives. 

Dimebon-I think I’ve posted on this drug before, but I’ll recap.  It’s a Russian antihistamine that had been long forgotten, mainly because better antihistamines hit the market.  In it’s first round of clinical trials patients maintained their level of functioning for 18 months.  The Alzheimer’s Association is cautiously optimistic for two reasons.  One–because there a significant differences in the way drug trials are run in Russia.  Two–because this is a drug that treats the symptoms of the disease-not a cure.

Gamma Inhibitors-the drugs in these trials are unnamed, so they’re referenced only by long numbers right now.  I won’t bore you with that information, but the Alzheimer’s Association has further details if you’d like to learn more.  Gamma inhibitors show promise in that they reduce the level of beta-amyloid in spinal fluid and blood.  It remains to be seen if this will be an effective treatment since as we learned in part one, beta-amyloid is no longer thought to be the bad guy.

Rage Inhibitors-again no formal names for this group.  The trials under way for rage inhibitors are thought to reduce inflammation which would potentially provide cognitive protection.

Vaccines-There are two types of vaccines currently in trials, active and passive vaccines.  The long-term goal with any vaccine would be to administer the vaccine before symptoms were present so the individual could mount an immune response.

To sum up, while there have been some impressive gains made in our understanding of the end result of Alzheimer’s disease, there is much to be done from a research standpoint.  I’d like to encourage you all to VOTE!  I truly believe that no disease should be a partisan issue.  Wait for it…BUT, having said that I’ll repeat that if we took the money we spent in three days of operations in Iraq we could fund a clinical trial for fifteen years.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Alzheimer's Info, Public Policy Forum, Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.