Researchers show promise of blood infusions delaying Alzheimer’s onset
For decades, Alzheimer’s has been silently ravaging brains, stealing memories and shortening the lives of millions of Americans. Now, researchers say they may be on the brink of tantalizing treatment breakthroughs that could for the first time at least slow the disease’s deadly progression.
How did they manage to see if the treatment really works? A good example is David Johnson, who is now 59 years-old. He was not surprised when he has diagnosed with this disease four years ago as he began to forget members of his family, including his father. He resigned and went to a clinical trial in Sacramento, where this new treatment was given to him. After almost five years, his disease has not progressed. The doctors said it is too soon to confirm if the treatment really works, but we know for sure that it slowed down the disease.
If the treatment will succeed, that would mean one of the important medical discoveries in the history. There are hundreds of clinical trials who try to find a cure for Alzheimer’s and dementia. Researchers promised us that some of those therapies are in their final phases and
they have promising results. We really hope to see results in the near future and, who knows, maybe this disease will have a treatment in a few years.“We’re entering a new era where we are very close to having the first proven disease-modifying therapy. It’s taken an awful lot of work for the last decade, but we think it’s slowing down the progression of the disease,” said Dr. John Olichney, neurology professor and director of clinical trials for the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center.
The study, based at the Sutter Neuroscience Institute in Sacramento, involves a blood product called intravenous immunoglobulin, or IVIG, which is extracted from the plasma of blood donors. It’s a collection of purified antibodies, including those that work against amyloid, an abnormal brain protein found in Alzheimer’s patients.
Sutter’s clinical trial included 50 patients – ages 50 to 84 – all of whom had MRIs that indicated mild cognitive impairment due to early-stage Alzheimer’s. They were given five infusions, either IVIG or saline as a placebo, over 10 weeks.
A year later, brain imaging of the two groups showed less brain atrophy and cognitive decline in the IVIG group.
“We saw a significant reduction in brain atrophy in the (IVIG) group compared to the placebo group,” said Dr. Shawn Kile, a neurologist with the Sutter Neuroscience Institute and co-founder of the Sutter Memory Clinic and principal investigator of the IVIG study. “This is something to build upon in future studies. I was always hopeful it would work, but it was exciting to see the results.”
After 12 months, the IVIG group showed an annualized brain atrophy rate of 5.8 percent, compared with 8.1 percent in the placebo group. Also, there was a marked difference in the transition from mild cognitive impairment to dementia: 33 percent for the IVIG group, compared with 58 percent for the placebo group.
After 24 months, the positive benefit of IVIG appeared to fade. There was still a difference in brain atrophy and conversion to dementia between the IVIG and placebo groups, but it was no longer statistically significant, the Sutter study found.
Previous clinical trials used IVIG to treat later-stage Alzheimer’s dementia but showed only limited benefit, leading to Sutter’s study of patients in the earlier, pre-dementia phase.
“The best strategy is to catch it early and diffuse these antibodies into patients before they have lost a lot of brain tissue due to atrophy,” said Kile. “You have to catch this disease early to have an active intervention.”
The neurologist, who said he’s been interested in IVIG therapy since joining Sutter in 2007, said he hopes Sutter’s study will lead to additional investigations by other researchers “so we can eventually conquer this devastating disease.”
He said the next Sutter study will look at whether an annual infusion after 12 months could yield the same benefit as seen in the initial study.
“This is a horrible disorder and we need a treatment,” said Kile, whose grandfather died of the disease. “We don’t have a disease-modifying treatment that changes the course of Alzheimer’s. … If we can do something to stop it, it will be remarkable.”
The study was published recently in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
