Scientists search for ways to halt Alzheimer’s earlier

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Look for a fundamental shift in how scientists hunt ways to ward off the devastation of Alzheimer’s disease — by testing possible therapies in people who don’t yet show many symptoms, before too much of the brain is destroyed.

The most ambitious attempt: An international study announced Tuesday will track whether an experimental drug can stall the disease in people who appear healthy but are genetically destined to get a type of Alzheimer’s that runs in families. If so, it would be exciting evidence that perhaps regular Alzheimer’s is preventable, too.

A second study will test whether a nasal spray that sends insulin to the brain helps people with very early memory problems, based on separate research linking diabetes to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s.

The new focus emerges as the Obama administration adopts the first national strategy to fight the worsening Alzheimer’s epidemic — a plan that sets the clock ticking toward finally having effective treatments by 2025.

“We are at an exceptional moment,” with more important discoveries about Alzheimer’s in the past few months than in recent years, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, declared Tuesday.

But a meeting of the world’s top Alzheimer’s scientists this week made clear that meeting the 2025 deadline will require developing a mix of treatments to attack the various ways that Alzheimer’s damages the brain — much like it can take a cocktail of drugs to treat high blood pressure or the AIDS virus.

Perhaps more importantly, it will require testing possible drugs before full-blown Alzheimer’s sets in, when it may be too late to do much good. After all, Alzheimer’s starts ravaging the brain at least a decade before memory problems appear. And doctors don’t wait until the worst symptoms appear before treating heart disease, cancer or diabetes, noted Dr. Reisa Sperling of Harvard Medical School.

“Once the train leaves the station of degeneration, it might be too late to stop it,” Sperling said. “We need to define the critical window for intervention.”

Future therapy is far from the only goal of the first National Alzheimer’s Plan. It’s a two-pronged approach, promising to provide better support for overwhelmed families along the way.