Now, that's a promissory note at this point, since we don't have the preventive treatments, yet. But that's what a lot of people are working on in the basic science laboratory, and I think that we will get there. But before we can use those prevention strategies early, we have to identify people who might be at greater risk for developing this disease.
Your recent study found that patients with mild cognitive impairment could delay more serious memory problems by taking the Alzheimer's treatment, Aricept, but ultimately the drug did not prevent the disease. Is preventing Alzheimer's a matter of finding the disease earlier, a matter of stronger drugs or both?
Both. Our study on mild cognitive impairment indicated that you can intervene at an earlier stage than has previously been recognized. This was the first study demonstrating that you could have any effect at delaying the diagnosis of Alzheimer's. That had not been shown before.
Now, this is not a huge effect, and we didn't stop the disease by any means, but we did indicate that at least this one type of intervention can slow down the progression of Alzheimer's disease by up to 12 months. So, I think if we have better therapeutic interventions and preferably an intervention that would actually have an effect on the underlying disease process, that we can intervene at least at this MCI stage. We'd like to intervene even earlier by getting to those people who have the risk profile of developing Alzheimer's disease before they even become symptomatic.
What other interventions are being tested?
There are several strategies to try to stop the abnormal processing of this amyloid protein in the brain.
