welcome to the organic green doctor blog

i am a family physician who was diagnosed with
early mild cognitive impairment(mci) amnestic type on december 21, 2010
this is a precursor to alzheimers disease
because of this diagnosis i have opted to stop practicing medicine
this blog will be about my journey with this disease
please feel free to follow me along this path
i will continue blogging on organic gardening, green living,
solar power, rainwater collection, and healthy living
i will blog on these plus other things noted to be interesting

Friday, May 29, 2015

alzheimers news-much adu

ALZHEIMERS NEWS-MUCH ADU
this is much adu about something
that may be a game changer in alzheimers treatment
if we are lucky it will available in 2018

my wife she handed me this magazine
i still get all these free magazines from when i
was in practice
i rarely read them
we just recycle them

i opened to this article on a new potential treatment
for alzheimers
now i briefly wrote about it once before but this
article went into more depths on its history and its
potential

if you have an interest in alzheimers treatment you
should take the time to read this article

previous treament studies with antibodies didnt show good results
why
they treated people who were later in the disease process
many were way too late
they also when they went back and rescanned folks
they realized many didnt have the disease at all

now you can accurately predict who has the disease by
taking a good history
doing memory tests
doing mri scans
doing glucose utilization pet scans of the brain
(alzheimers patients lose the ability to absorb glucose
and it shows as blank areas on the pet scan)
doing spinal tap for beta amyloid and tau protein in the
spinal fluid
(beta amyloid decreases and tau increases in the spinal fluid
as the disease progresses )
then
a beta amyloid pet scan called amyvid can be done to show if it has
accumulated
it starts 15-20 years before symptoms start

now i have had all these tests so thats why im more certain
about my diagnosis of possible alzheimers disease

these werent all done in the other companies studies that failed

Image result for biogen
a company called biogen entered the picture

an european researcher isolated an antibody from healthy
older folks who were very mentally alert
that antibody was eventually called
aducanumab
adu for short

so in phase 1 studies they take a small number of volunteers
to try different doses on them and to look mainly for
side effects
if things look promising they go to phase 2
then
if that goes well to phase 3
phase 3 is more expensive to do as it uses more folks
in the studies
its the phase right before the fda approves the new drug

what they found in the phase 1 study of adu
was that the antibody seemed to work
folks got better on memory tests and scans showed
the bad stuff beta amyloid was being removed from the
brain
a+b=c

why was this working
they screened folks better so that they were more sure that
they were dealing with alzheimers patients
they treated folks who had not developed full blown disease
but had positive scans
this is called preclinical alzheimers
they also treated folks with early disease  who had mild symptoms
i am in between these two
which has prevented me from being in some of these treatment studies

now adu is on to phase 3 studies
these results should be out in a couple of years
if things go well
then adu may be on the market for you and me
in
2018

so this is much adu about something
a game changer
for me and others if it works

the organicgreen doctor

2 comments:

  1. Hi Doctor,
    Thank you so much for posting about this new trial drug. I always learn something when I read your blog. I'm curious to know, though, how does one go about getting the insurance companies to agree to test for preclinical Alzheimers? My mother died of Alzheimers complications. I've been feeling "off" for over a year, little things that I do that don't make sense, or things that I forget that I shouldn't be forgetting. I'm also worried about possible personality changes. I strongly suspect my oldest sister has it because, bless her heart, she can't remember what she said 5 minutes ago. She even told me that she doesn't remember anything anymore. She's 67.

    But how do I get the medical professionals to do a scan or spinal tap or blood test? Do I just get an appointment with a neurologist and tell them what's going on? Unfortunately, I'm like millions of other Americans who have no family doctor, so I can't start there.

    Thanks for blogging! We need you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thanks for reading my blog
      you can go to this link on what to do for an evaluation of memory loss
      http://www.organicgreendoctor.com/2015/04/links-end.html

      go to your primary care or a neurologists with only the one complaint memory loss
      insurance should cover the tests and visit
      it will not cover the spinal test for amyloid or the pet scan for amyloid
      togd

      Delete