Alzheimer's Clinical Trial Setbacks

A clinical trial of an Alzheimer’s treatment has failed, and another has been modified due to serious side effects.

A Phase III trial involving over 1000 patients diagnosed with mild Alzheimer’s disease showed  no benefits from tarenflurbil, a potential treatment designed to lower levels of beta amyloid, a protein some researchers believe causes Alzheimer’s. 

A trial of a second potential treatment targeting beta amyloid, Elan’s ELND005, will continue with only a low dose group of patients.  Serious side effects, including deaths, in two higher dose groups led the company to make this decision.

These setbacks will probably lead to more discussion about whether treatments meant to prevent or reduce the buildup of beta amyloid are likely to be effective.   But the larger question is whether it’s realistic to expect any single treatment to cure such a complex and varied disorder.  If not, we need to focus more on finding ways to live with memory loss while research continues.

Comments

[Richard Taylor]

Hello

On the occasion of two more heralded pills failing to make a difference in the lives of those swallowing them and those living with those swallowing them.

It is only deeply vested interested parties who continue to characterize the search for "the cure" in the simplest of terms. "Your donation will bring the cure to the forefront quicker and surer" they tell us. A world without Alzheimer's as a vision leaves out of sight all the other folks with all the other types of dementia, assuming of course they are each and all mutually exclusive of each other - which of course is a claim yet to be proven. The reality of there being an actual light at the end of an actual tunnel assumes there is an actual narrow tunnel leading to the cure pill next to the light at the end of the tunnel.

How much more evidence is needed before the characterizations of folks trying to scare us into donating to their organizations, trying to convince us every day we are closer to the cure, trying to convince us the best use of most of the money spent on research is to search for a cure, because that is the best way we can spend our limited dollars right now to help folks who are currently living with the symptoms of dementia - discover the ingredients for a pill that will cure them of their symptoms and keep everyone from ever having the symptoms - forever and ever.
'
"They", who ever "they" are in real life just don't seem to get "it." At worst, they will never get "it" and at best, we'll al be long dead when they do get "it" and have invested billions of dollars in the folly of searching for a cure-pill.

I don't believe they will ever will get "it." We could spend years trying to figure out what drives them to remain blinded to the increasingly larger number of failed pills and long held, passionately defended, and increasingly disproven theories, hopes, and fantasies.

And in the mean time federal and private funds are thrown at bench research, while relatively few pennies are spent on psycho-social research into the causes and cures of the day to day problems of living with dementia by the more than 7 million of us living with the symptoms of dementia, and the 14 to 28 million more of our family caregivers and professional caregivers who must also live with someone who exhibits the symptoms of dementia. In ten years 2 out of 3 Americans will know someone who is living with dementia.

In ten years we will all still be waiting for some researcher to reach the end of the tunnel. We will all still be waiting for something to drop out of the pipeline full of cure and delay dementia pills other than those that have failed to produce significant and positive results. There will simply be many more people standing around waiting for a cure. Many many more people living directly or indirectly with the symptoms of dementia and all the ensuing up-sets of self, relationships, families that comes with the symptoms. Lots and lots more of us will still be waiting for the over funded/built train to reach the end of the imaginary tunnel!

Rise up. Stop supporting the efforts to search for a light at the end of a tunnel when there is no light, no tunnel, no track - just a lot of workers willing to work for a paycheck even though the purported fruit of their efforts is a non existent tree.

Mixed metaphor or not, please join me in standing up and speaking out and saying enough is enough. Let's put our hearts, money, minds and efforts into support for those living in and with dementia.

Rise up. Stop supporting the efforts to search for a light at the end of a tunnel when there is no light, no tunnel, no track - just a lot of workers willing to work for a paycheck even though the proported fruit of their efforts is a non existent tree.

Mixed metahphor or not, please join join me in standing up and speaking out and saying enough is enough. Let's put our hearts, money, minds, and efforts into support for those living in and with dementia?

Richard