A recent study out of Manchester shows that giving mice anti-inflammatory drugs reduced and in some cases reversed memory problems the mice were experiencing related to Alzheimer’s disease.
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Now, Dr. Brough and colleagues believe they may be on the way to achieving such a feat, after finding the drug mefenamic acid may hold potential for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
Sharing the finding s of the study, the researchers said, “Treatment with mefenamic acid of an established disease model abated brain inflammation and memory deficits suggesting that inflammation is a druggable target for Alzheimer’s disease”.
In the study, authors Auriel Wilette, assistant professor of food science and human nutrition at Iowa State, and Ashley Swanson, graduate research assistant at Iowa State, analyzed data from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative to find which aspects of the immune system were most relevant to tracking Alzheimer’s disease progression. The results, by researchers from the University of Cambridge, identified a specific signature of a group of genes in the regions of the brain which are most vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease.
The results showed that the mice with Alzheimer’s showed a complete reverse in memory loss to that of mice with no signs of Alzheimer’s. In the United States, about five million people now suffer from the degenerative disease that has claimed one in three senior citizens with some form of dementia. The drug was given to them by a mini-pump implanted under the skin for one month.
According to the study, inflammation causes Alzheimer’s disease to get worse, and that treating the inflammation reduce its effects.
The drug called mefenamic acid is a common nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) often used to control period (menstrual) pain, as well as treat other types of mild to moderate pain.
The study was published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications. The drug targets an inflammatory pathway called NLRP3 inflammasome, which can damage brain cells – which is why the researchers tested it in mice with Alzheimer’s-like symptoms.
The research, funded by the Medical Research Council and the Alzheimer’s Society, paves the way for human trials which the team hope to conduct in the future.
Although a neurostatin for human use is still quite some time away, a shorter-term benefit of these results may be the development of more effective animal models for the study of Alzheimer’s disease. “Testing drugs already in use for other conditions is a priority for Alzheimer’s Society – it could allow us to shortcut the fifteen years or so needed to develop a new dementia drug from scratch”.
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Although the drug shows promise for sufferers of the debilitating disease and is already widely used, the researchers said that additional research is still needed to determine the potential side effects of taking the drug as treatment for Alzheimer’s and to establish its effectiveness.
