my story revisited #73-maybe they will work

MY STORY REVISITED #73-MAYBE THEY WILL WORK 

in 2012 i was two years into my diagnosis
i was two years into my adni or alzheimers disease neuroimaging initiative study
i had several memory tests several mris at least two spinal taps one amyvid pet scan for amyloid lots of blood tests lots of my dna and rna was collected and the results distributed to researchers all over the world
this study was diagnostic testing only and not treatment

i didnt mind doing my part to further alzheimers knowledge
eg
i was one of 800 who got their total genome done
thats all of my genes were done
it was fed into the information and data central bank for researchers all over the world to access

i see sometimes some of the results of some of the studies knowing it was my dna or rna that was used to make some of these findings

about this time the two antibodies solanezumab and bapinezumab did their studies that showed that these antibodies didnt work well
i was disappointed since the thought was using monoclonal antibodies to remove amyloid from the brain might be the answer to treating alzheimers

one problem was these early studies were using the antibodies like solanezumab in folks with moderate alzheimers disease 
now we know that by the time people get diagnosed with moderate alzheimers its too late to stop the disease or slow down the disease

thats the stage that a lot of people are in when they get their diagnosis
my mother and my brother were in that moderate stage at diagnosis
now we know when they reach this moderate stages the new treatments arent going to work
as
the disease has progressed too far to stop it

solanezumab made by lilly has a long term study they are doing where they started patients on solanezumab who are prealzheimers
ie
they have no symptoms look fine but when you do a spinal tap on them for amyloid and tau its abnormal and if you do an amyvid pet scan for amyloid its positive
now they might also in the research world do one of the new alzheimers blood tests
so
these patients have alzheimers they just have not showed symptoms yet

this study called the a4 study by lilly should show if pretreating them with solanezumab will slow down or prevent the development of alzheimers

about this time when i wrote the blog below is when i started reading about my drug biogen aducanumab a monoclonal antibody against amyloid that may slow down the disease

in my study i am in now they are treating patients with mild cognitive impairment due to alzheimers and patients with early alzheimers hoping its not too late to treat us

there are other studies using aducanumab looking at prealzheimers patients

there was a lot of hope in 2012 that these antibody treatments would work
their failure in moderate alzheimers patients was disappointing
however
today some of the potential positive findings are showing up for some of the new antibody drugs and in my drug aducanumab if its given early on in the disease

__________
08-31-2012
MAY NOT WORK
ive written before about the new alzheimers vaccines
that are in phase 3 studies
a lot of hope was being placed on these studies
 
the theory is that these antibodies are injected into the
body and they bind to beta amyloid
this beta amyloid which is thought to be the end result
of the disease process in alzheimers disease is then removed
from the brain
the hope is that by doing this there is improvement
in cognitive abilities

two of these drugs are called solanezumab and bapineuzumab
the studies were large studies done on patients with mild
to moderate alzheimers

the results were not promising
overall there was some slowing of cognitive decline
but not significantly
however when the mild alzheimers group was looked at
their was more improvement in cognitive decline than in
the moderate group

the thought is that maybe the drug should be used in people
who dont have symptoms yet or people like me who are in
the early mild cognitive impairment group might have
more improvement if started on these drugs early

much like the cholesterol drugs such as lipitor and crestor etc
that are given early so that heart attacks and strokes can be
prevented later in life

the iv immunoglobulin study that was recently done showed
in those who received the larger dose of this stuff
had a slight change in their alzheimers disease over the three
years of the study
so there is something in the blood that will slow down or
stop this disease but what it is is not known yet

this will be continued soon i hope
__________

there was hope then
and
now today there is even more hope these will work

the organicgreen doctor