Drug combination could reverse Alzheimers

[Who Me?]

This drug combination could reverse Alzheimers

A highly-personalized combination treatment program reversed Alzheimer's disease symptoms in patients, according to researchers.
The Buck Institute investigators said their findings suggest the degenerative brain disease is more treatable than previously believed, United Press Internationalreported.
The study included 10 people with mild cognitive impairment, subjective cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease. The researchers created personalized multi-faceted treatment programs for each patient, including diet changes, exercise, improved sleep, brain stimulation, drugs and vitamins.
The patients were treated for between five and 24 months. All 10 patients showed improvements in thinking and memory, and some were even able to return to work and complete tasks that had become impossible for them as their mental abilities declined, UPI reported.

[MORE: Gene Tool Shows Promise In Curing HIV, Cancer and Autism]

"The magnitude of improvement in these 10 patients is unprecedented, providing additional objective evidence that this programmatic approach to cognitive decline is highly effective," Dr. Dale Bredesen, a professor at the Buck Institute and the University of California Los Angeles, said in a news release.
"Even though we see the far-reaching implications of this success, we also realize that this is a very small study that needs to be replicated in larger numbers at various sites," Bredeson added.

[READ: New Study Suggests Alzheimer's Patients Can Store Memories]

The study in the journal Aging was small, but points to new ways to treat Alzheimer's instead of using just one or two drugs to delay declines in mental function, according to the researchers.
Their approach was inspired by some of the recent successes in using combination therapy to treat heart disease, cancer and HIV, UPI reported.
"Imagine having a roof with 36 holes in it, and your drug patched one hole very well -- the drug may have worked, a single 'hole' may have been fixed, but you still have 35 other leaks, and so the underlying process may not be affected much," Bredesen said.

"We think addressing multiple targets within the molecular network may be additive, or even synergistic, and that such a combinatorial approach may enhance drug candidate performance, as well," Bredeson explained.
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http://health.usnews.com/health-care/articles/2016-06-16/health-highlights-june-16-2016?src=usn_fb

 

[Hope]

Didn't see anywhere what the specific interventions were. Which supplements, diet, etc, did I miss it somewhere?

 

[Who Me?]

This explains a bit more.

Alzheimer’s Treatment Exceeding Expectations in Early Trials

A new drug from Biogen Idec, a biotechnology firm, has surpassed expectations in early drug trials by slowing seemingly unstoppable cognitive decline. The drug, known as either BIIB037 or aducanumab, works to slow cognitive decline by reducing the amyloid plaques in the brains of people with dementia. Many researchers believe these plaques and tangles of beta amyloid actually cause the neurodegenerative disease.

http://www.alzheimers.net/4-15-15-promising-new-alzheimers-treatment/

 

[Cort]

Wow.. My dad is actually declining pretty rapidly.....I think all they're hoping for now is stopping it. Reversing it would be amazing...

This drug combination could reverse Alzheimers




http://health.usnews.com/health-care/articles/2016-06-16/health-highlights-june-16-2016?src=usn_fb

 

[Cort]

Since mild cognitive declines are present early in both ME/CFS and Alzheimer's, that treatment trial is certainly something to look further into.

 

[Who Me?]

Wow.. My dad is actually declining pretty rapidly.....I think all they're hoping for now is stopping it. Reversing it would be amazing...

That'd be amazing if this worked. My cousin's husband is going downhill fast.

 

[Who Me?]

Since mild cognitive declines are present early in both ME/CFS and Alzheimer's, that treatment trial is certainly something to look further into.

Mementine (Namenda), which has been talked about her to help with or cognitive stuff was a no go for me. Horrible fog even on a tiny dose. My cognitive decline is anything but mild. Lol

 

[Cort]

This was a UCLA study! It was a real study....Here's some more on it.

Each person was given a personalized treatment program, called metabolic enhancement for neurodegeneration (MEND). MEND included a combination of drugs, vitamins, diet, exercise, brain stimulation, and improved sleep habits. All 10 of the patients experienced a reversal of their symptoms, to varying degrees, including being able to return to work and perform tasks that were once impossible. Considering that panels have claimed there is no way to delay or reverse Alzheimer’s, this is huge
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Of course, this is a small study and its implications on a larger group aren’t yet known. But it’s very promising. The one caveat is that the treatment regimen must be continued. One of the 10 patients stopped treatment after three months and showed rapid decline in cognitive abilities. The improvements can indeed be sustained, though, as patients have been monitored for up to four years and showed they maintained their improvements as long as they stayed with the regimen. It’s not known how long the improvements will last.

If you read Table 1 of the study here, you can get an idea of what types of diet and exercise were used in MEND. Many different methods were used, depending on the goal. Brain stimulation involved a cognitive training program. Diet included fasting 12 hours a night, low-grain or low-glycemic diets, using an anti-inflammatory diet, using prebiotics and probiotics if needed, optimizing antioxidants with blueberries and other products, and taking vitamins and supplements including D3, K2, thiamine, resveratrol, coconut oil, and more. For sleep, patients needed to sleep eight hours a night and take .5 mg of melatonin, plus 500 mg of Trp if awakening. Exercise was 30 to 60 minutes a day, four to six days a week. To reduce stress, patients did yoga, meditation, listened to music, or a number of personalized approaches.

We have specific examples from the study of people’s results. For example, a 66-year-old man’shippocampal volume reduced to just the 17th percentile in his age range. After 10 months, he had increased to the 75th percentile.

A 69-year-old man had early Alzheimer’s and was going to have to close his business. One of his cognitive tests showed he had fallen to the 3rd percentile. After 22 months on MEND, he was in the 84th percentile and expanding his business.

A 49-year-old woman who spoke two languages had lost her abilities and showed signs of early Alzheimer’s. She also had increasing problems with finding words and recognizing faces. After several months on MEND, her reading and facial recall skills had improved and her foreign language skills returned. After nine months, she had no signs of any cognitive decline.

A woman in her 50s who couldn’t shop for groceries anymore and had trouble recognizing faces showed marked improvement that was kept for 3.5 years. At first she ranked on the 35th percent in cognitive skills, despite being an excellent student when she was younger. After being on the MEND protocol, she was in the 98th percentile in cognitive skills.