Friday, February 10, 2012

Cancer Drug Erases Alzheimer's Symptoms in Days



Neuroscientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have made a dramatic breakthrough in their efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. The drug in question, Bexarotene has been approved for the treatment of cancer by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for more than a decade.

Alzheimer's Reading Room 

Gary Landreth
In the study described below, the cancer drug Bexarotene quickly and dramatically improved brain function and social ability and restored the sense of smell in mice bred with a form of Alzheimer's disease. 

Imagine this.

Within hours of taking the drug, amyloid plaques began to clear out of the mice’s brains. After three days, more than 50 percent of the Alzheimer’s plaques had disappeared, and the mice regained some of the cognitive and memory functions typically lost in Alzheimer's disease.

How do you get the drug? The drug is approved by the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration ) for the treatment of skin cancer. As far as approval for the treatment of Alzheimer's it has a long way to go. The leap from mice to several phases of human clinical trials takes many years. And so far, a long list of promising Alzheimer's drugs have failed in clinical trials.

Families of Alzheimer's patients might try and reach for Bexarotene which is FDA approved and readily available with a prescription.

 Cancer Drug Erases Alzheimer's Symptoms in Days

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