Future Cure for Alzheimer's

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, five million people in the United States are living with Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's disease is caused by Amyloid-beta plaque buildups in the brain and characterized by memory loss, difficulty with language, calculations, and visual-spatial skills, behavioral alterations, psychosis, and dementia. Currently, there is no cure or effective treatment for Alzheimer's, and many preliminary clinical trials have failed to produce any viable results.

Dr. Sangram Sisodia came to Loyola University Chicago to speak about his research regarding a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. He and his team have found that exercise improves memory and increases the size of the hippocampus, the first part of the brain affected by the disease. He and his team fed antibiotics to mice that were genetically engineered to develop Amyloid-beta plaques, and what they found was that even though these mice had the same amount of bacteria in the gut as the group that did not receive the antibiotics, the species of bacteria was different, with less diversity in the group treated with antibiotics. This seemed to affect the brain; the mice which received the antibiotics had fewer and smaller Amyloid-beta plaques in the brain compared to others. The exact relationship between bacteria in the gut and Amyloid-beta plaques in the brain is not known, but this study shows a promising future in Alzheimer's studies. The next step would be to perform human trials, with hopefully the same results.

Patricia Vradenburg, a crusader against Alzheimer's disease tried to do just that, find a remedy for the disease, after her mother died from it in 1992 at seventy-six years old. She and her husband raised ten million dollars for research, which has given up nothing useful, unfortunately. The organization she has created, UsAgainstAlzheimer's, has created public awareness of the disease and advocated for more federal government investment in experimentation, speedier development of drugs, and improved patient care. She claims that a cure for this disease is "yesterday's dream" and can become "today's reality," and Dr. Sisodia's research is a step in providing this reality.


Resources:

"Alzheimer's Kills Many more than Previously Thought: Study." NY Daily News. N.p., 06 Mar. 2014. Web. 01 May 2017.

Roberts, Sam. "Trish Vradenburg, Crusader Against Alzheimer's, Dies at 70." The New York Times. The New York Times, 19 Apr. 2017. Web. 01 May 2017.

Sanders, Laura. "Antibiotics Might Fight Alzheimer's Plaques." Science News. N.p., 10 Aug. 2016. Web 01 May 2017.

Image: https://www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers/publication/alzheimers-disease-fact-sheet