Tuesday, October 16, 2012

New Drug for Alzheimer’s Disease


http://www.doctortipster.com/11700-new-alzheimers-disease-drug-capable-of-repairing-synaptic-damage.html


According to the article, researchers from the Washington State University have created a new drug that repair damaged nerve connections. Unlike previous drugs for Alzheimer’s disease that only slow down the progression of the disease, this new drug is involved in repairing damage in the synapse between neurons. The primary researchers, Harding and Wright, produced this new drug, called Dihexia, from a compound that they had worked and developed since the early 90’s. The first compound they made was unable to pass through the blood-brain barrier, so for the past five years, they worked on developing a new drug that would be small enough to pass through.

In their study, they used rats to demonstrate the effect of their drugs. Rats were given scopolamine in order to hinder their learning process. Then, they were supposed to search for the location of a submerged platform. Due to the scopolamine, they were not able to find the platform. However, when given Dihexia, rats were able to learn the location of the submerged platform, regardless of the administered scopolamine. Although the drug seems to be effective, further testing is required. In addition, the FDA needs to approve the drug.

Personally, I do not know anyone suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. However, I think that Harding and Wright’s research will contribute greatly to regeneration of neurons in general. Finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease is a great step towards finding treatment for other degenerative diseases of the brain. How about you guys? How do you think this will impact drug treatment? Do you think this study has enough external validity?

3 comments:

  1. Prince, your article about the new drug discovery for Alzheimer's disease was interesting, because all of the previous drugs that have been invented for Alzheimer's disease have been for slowing the progression of the disease or helping to prevent cell death. However, this new drug, Dihexia, is used to repair nerve connections in people with Alzheimer's disease. Maybe this drug will help them find a cure for Alzheimer's and developing other new ways to treat the disease. If the drug, Dihexia, is used to repair nerve connections in the brain could it used for other diseases or disorders that have caused nerve damage such as epilepsy? Further research should be conducted to determine how effective this drug is.

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  2. Prince, this is a very interesting article. I agree with Amanda in that further research should be conducted in order to determine how effective this drug is and in order for the FDA to pass. They're very strict about the types of protocols that new drugs have to pass in order to be distributed to people. Even though rats are a common test subject for human drugs, do you think the effect of the drug would stimulate nerve repair for humans as well?

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  3. Alzheimer's essentially causes a loss of brain tissue over time that starts with a person forgetting simple things and progresses to fully fledged dementia. The big question that everyone wants to know is what causes Alzheimer's and what can be done to prevent it?

    Alzheimer specialist

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