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Type II Diabetes Drugs May Slow or Reverse Alzheimers

Marco

Grrrrrrr!
Messages
2,386
Location
Near Cognac, France
Some pioneering work going on at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland has just received Chinese funding for a 'proof of concept' clinical trial :


Tests by Professor Holscher and his team have revealed that Victoza, a once-daily injected drug developed by Novo Nordisk and used to treat type 2 diabetes, also shows strong potential to help people who have Alzheimers disease, by reducing or slowing down degenerative symptoms.

He said: My group tested Victoza to determine if it had any beneficial effects in cellular models of Alzheimers disease and we found that it does. It is quite potent in protecting neurons.

Under a major agreement signed in the city of Taiyuan by Professor Holscher and academic and government officials, clinical studies on the effectiveness of Victoza will be conducted and funded by the Medical University of Shanxi.

The agreement signals hope by the Medical University and the Chinese government to ease conditions for Chinas increasing number of Alzheimers patients. The country has the worlds largest and fastest ageing population.

http://news.ulster.ac.uk/releases/2011/6114.html


Much more detail in the animal model paper :

The inflammation response as measured by activated microglia numbers was halved in liraglutide treated
APP/PS1 mice. Numbers of young neurons in the dentate gyrus were increased in APP/PS1 mice with treatment.

The GLP-1 receptor agonist crosses the BBB and can prevent the deterioration of learning in object recognition and water maze tasks. The levels of performance in the drug treated group are on the same level as in wild-type controls.

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/17/6587.full.pdf
 

Marco

Grrrrrrr!
Messages
2,386
Location
Near Cognac, France
I admit I wasn't being entirely altruistic in bringing this up.

While I have the greatest of sympathy for anyone struck by Alzheimers and some of us may face it ourselves in later years, type II diabetes (or more specifically metabolic syndrome) brain inflammation and glial cells have all been associated with ME/CFS.

If there is degenerative disease in the ME/CFS brain its comforting to know that this may be slowed or possibly even reversed if similar mechanisms are at work.
 
Messages
1
Victoza might slow or reverse some other kind of amnesia, but not Alzheimer. I don't think any other diabetes medication would. Hopefully they'll the cure for Alzheimer, the answer it might not be from a chemical source, but a natural source. I find natural products way more effective, and I trust them more, cause they're good to your body. I personally find this new herbal based product (link removed) very interesting, cause it works in a natural manner by increasing the sensitivity of body tissues to circulating insulin and providing relief of unpleasant diabetes symptoms that decrease the patients quality of life and productivity.
This is the kind of medications that really heals.