my story revisited #188-it was much adu about something

MY STORY REVISITED #188-IT WAS MUCH ADU ABOUT SOMETHING

thats one of my former patients wearing our walk t shirt for our walk to end alzheimers that year
it was i think the first walk we did after i was diagnosed 

some of my kid patients called me dr duck thus the i walk for dr duck t shirt

this patient is now in college sadly at texas am
i always encouraged him to go to the university of texas
he didnt listen to me

in 2015 when i wrote the blog about aducanumab or now called aduhelm or as i called it the adu drug
i had read an article in a medical magazine about aducanumab 

i wrote maybe it would be out in 2018 for use 
it turned out to be 2022 slowed by the pandemic and by a poor attempt to get it approved by biogen that delayed it and probably permanently stained this drug for use
more than likely leqembi and donanemab will be used in place of aducanumab

when i wrote that blog i had just finished 5 years of the adni 2 study and was waiting for a treatment study
i had my eye on the aducanumab study
it would be a year later when i would be accepted in the study then two years later when i started treatment with aducanumab or as it turned out the first 18 infusions were placebo 
i have had 34 infusions of aducanumab or aduhelm

thsi blog below gives some of the history of where the drug came from
 __________
05-29-2015
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 treatment 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

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
__________ 

now in 2023 folks are screened first with a blood test that fairly accurately tells you if you have alzheimers
then if you pass that screen test they do a amyloid pet scan to be sure
then treatment can began if there are no contraindications to treatment
there is no reason to do a spinal tap
the glucose metabolism pet scan isnt generally done any more since the amyloid pet scan is readily available and gives you more information

so in 2015 that article was much adu about something important in the alzheimers world


join me for our santa barbara walk to end alzheimers on saturday october 14th
join us and or donate to our organicgreendoctor team 
or do your own local walk

the organicgreen doctor