Enbrel as a treatment for Alzheimer's?

[Guest guest]

Symptoms of Alzheimer's Reversed in Minutes

Wednesday, January 9, 2008 10:42 AM

  

   

An extraordinary new scientific study, which for the first time

documents

marked improvement in Alzheimer’s disease within minutes of

administration of a

therapeutic molecule, has just been published in the Journal of

Neuroinflammation.

This new study highlights the importance of certain soluble proteins,

called

cytokines, in Alzheimer’s disease. The study focuses on one of these

cytokines, tumor necrosis factor-alpha(TNF), a critical component of

the brain’s immune

system. Normally, TNF finely regulates the transmission of neural

impulses in

the brain. The authors hypothesized that elevated levels of TNF in

Alzheimer’

s disease interfere with this regulation. To reduce elevated TNF, the

authors

gave patients an injection of an anti-TNF therapeutic called etanercept.

Excess TNF-alpha has been documented in the cerebrospinal fluid of

patients with

Alzheimer’s.

The new study documents a dramatic and unprecedented therapeutic effect

in an

Alzheimer’s patient: improvement within minutes following delivery of

perispinal etanercept, which is etanercept given by injection in the

spine.

Etanercept (trade name Enbrel) binds and inactivates excess TNF.

Etanercept is FDA

approved to treat a number of immune-mediated disorders and is used off

label in

the study.

The use of anti-TNF therapeutics as a new treatment choice for many

diseases,

such as rheumatoid arthritis and potentially even Alzheimer’s, was

recently

chosen as one of the top 10 health stories of 2007 by the Harvard Health

Letter.

Similarly, the Neurotechnology Industry Organization has recently

selected

new treatment targets revealed by neuroimmunology (such as excess TNF)

as one of

the top 10 Neuroscience Trends of 2007. And the Dana Alliance for Brain

Initiatives has chosen the pilot study using perispinal etanercept for

Alzheimer’s

for inclusion and discussion in their 2007 Progress Report on Brain

Research.

The lead author of the study, Tobinick M.D., is an assistant

clinical

professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles and

director of the Institute for Neurological Research, a private medical

group in Los

Angeles. Hyman Gross, M.D., clinical professor of neurology at the

University

of Southern California, was co-author.

The study is accompanied by an extensive commentary by Sue ,

Ph.D.,

director of research at the W. Reynolds Institute on Aging at the

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock and

at the

Geriatric Research and Clinical Center at the VA Hospital in Little

Rock, who along

with Mrak, M.D., chairman of pathology at University of Toledo

Medical

School, are editors-in-chief of the Journal of Neuroinflammation.

and Mrak are pioneers in the field of neuroinflammation.

published a landmark study in 1989 describing the association of

cytokine

overexpression in the brain and Alzheimer’s disease. Her research

helped pave the way

for the findings of the present study. has recently been

selected for

membership in the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, a nonprofit

organization of more than 200 leading neuroscientists, including ten

Nobel laureates.

“It is unprecedented that we can see cognitive and behavioral

improvement in

a patient with established dementia within minutes of therapeutic

intervention,

” said . “It is imperative that the medical and scientific

communities immediately undertake to further investigate and

characterize the

physiologic mechanisms involved. This gives all of us in Alzheimer’s

research a

tremendous new clue about new avenues of research, which is so exciting

and so needed

in the field of Alzheimer’s. Even though this report predominantly

discusses a

single patient, it is of significant scientific interest because of the

potential insight it may give into the processes involved in the brain

dysfunction

of Alzheimer’s.”

While the article discusses one patient, many other patients with mild

to

severe

Alzheimer’s received the treatment and all have shown sustained and

marked

improvement.