Scientists have discovered a new treatment capable of slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in mice. This revolutionary discovery offers new hope in the fight against neurodegenerative diseases.
- Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of neurodegenerative disease. In France, more than 900,000 people are affected by Alzheimer’s disease, the majority of them women. They are estimated at 46 million worldwide.
- Only 1 in 2 dementia is diagnosed, all stages combined. In the mild stages, only 1 in 3 cases is known to the patient or his doctor.
- The number of new cases is estimated at more than 225,000 people each year. By 2050, the number of people affected by a neurocognitive disease should reach more than 1,800,000 cases, or 9.6% of those over 65 years old.
A new treatment for Alzheimer’s disease? It is the hope aroused by a new study involving mice, published last Tuesday in the journal Science Signaling. Researchers from the University of Glasgow’s Center for Advanced Research (ARC) who conducted the study found that by using a certain drug, the lifespan of mice suffering from this neurodegenerative disease could be extended.
This new Alzheimer’s treatment targets a key brain protein
This new drug activates a brain protein called the “M1 receptor”. This protein is involved in memory and learning in people and is an important target for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
The study demonstrates that several symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, including memory loss and brain inflammation, can be treated with the drug. Importantly, this treatment may be able to slow the overall progression of the disease.
The drug used in the study, named by the researchers the “positive allosteric modulator” (M1-PAM) is the result of more than a decade of research. This discovery gives hope that M1-PAM, being tested on Alzheimer’s patients, could also slow the progression of the disease in humans.
Alzheimer’s: finally a drug capable of slowing the progression of the disease
Currently, treatments for Alzheimer’s disease can only target symptoms, such as memory impairment. Despite tremendous efforts by scientists around the world, attempts to find a drug capable of stopping or slowing the progression of the disease have so far been unsuccessful.
Could this drug finally achieve this goal? There are reasons to think so, according to the researchers. “We truly have the prospect of not only treating the symptoms of Alzheimer’s [mais aussi] to slow the disease and increase the lifespan of people suffering from these diseases”said in a communicatedProfessor Craig Lindsley, researcher at Vanderbilt University.
