Neuroscience Dominated By Neurodegenerative Disease
Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of neurodegenerative are the fastest-growing cause of death. They will soon be the leading cause of death.
“Alzheimer’s disease afflicts 5.3 million people in America alone,” said Dr. Stanley Prusiner, who earned the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1998. He characterized the deadly proteins (prions) at the heart of the global epidemic of neurodegenerative disease.
“Each year, about 500,000 people die with cancer and about the same number die with Alzheimer’s. Yet, Alzheimer’s disease research receives only $450 million annually from the National Institutes of Health, about 1/15th of the amount devoted to cancer research. We urgently need to increase funding to make substantial breakthroughs,” he said.
Prusiner’s most recent study confirms that Alzheimer’s disease is a prion disease–also known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSEs). Once again, it demands reform on many levels to protect public health.
“This shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that amyloid beta and tau are both prions, and that Alzheimer’s disease is a double-prion disorder in which these two rogue proteins together destroy the brain,” said Stanley Prusiner, MD, the study’s senior author and director of the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, part of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “The fact that prion levels also appear linked to patient longevity should change how we think about the way forward for developing treatments for the disease. We need a sea change in Alzheimer’s disease research, and that is what this paper does. This paper might catalyze a major change in AD research.”
Elsewhere, scientists are investigating connections between diet and Alzheimer’s, while others are looking for nutritional-based cures. For example, some Alzheimer’s researchers are studying turmeric, folic acid and Vitamin D3 as deterrents. The immune-stimulation effects of vitamin D3 in combination with curcumin (found in the spice turmeric), seems to help purge some of the protein buildup in the brain. Both vitamin D and curcumin help fight Alzheimer’s disease independently. They might accomplish even more when used together to treat and prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease research indicates that foods rich in B12 and Omega 3 fats might lower one’s risk of acquiring the disease. Coconut oil and blueberries also are beneficial. Alpha-lipoic acid supplements show early promise in clinical studies. It also helps reduce brain inflammation. University of South Florida’s Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute researchers recently received a $250,000 grant from a private foundation to conduct what is thought to be the first clinical trial of the effects of coconut oil on mild to moderate cases of Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease research from China indicates that melatonin supplements can prevent the development and slow the onset of dementia.
Melatonin protects neurons from protein toxicity and prevents protein formations such as fibrils in the brain. Melatonin is a hormone found in plants, animals and microbes. It decreases with age within patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s researchers in the U.K. claim that sensitivity to gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye, can trigger a number of neurological conditions, including dementia. (As you have noticed, protein is a common theme in this battle for the brain.) Writing in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, Dr. Marios Hadjivassilou stated, “Gluten sensitivity can be primarily, and at times exclusively, a neurological disease.”
Drugs known as anti-TNF blockers, already in use as a powerful therapy for rheumatoid arthritis, could offer hope against Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists in the U.S. showed that people with arthritis who take these drugs have a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s. One drug, Etanercept®, decreased the risk of developing the disease by 70 percent, according to Dr. Richard Chou of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. This drug targets inflammation, which might keep the body’s immune system in check and keep it from over-producing “recovery” proteins.
According to Dr. James Duke, plant-based nutrition offers hope. One of Duke’s books, The Green Pharmacy, has a chapter devoted to Alzheimer’s disease.
Elsewhere, scientists such as Claudio Soto, University of Texas, has concluded that deadly prions are in the urine of those who have prion disease. Dr. Ruth Gabizon pioneered such research several years earlier. His research is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the transmissibility and mismanagement of prion disease.
In August 2019, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases a part of National Institute of Health Services with the pharmaceutical partner Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is developing novel therapies for the treatment of prion disease.
