New treatments for Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia. This incurable, degenerative and terminal disease affects over 27m people worldwide, mostly aged over 65. The most common symptom is the inability to acquire new memories and difficulty in recalling recently observed facts. As the disease advances, further symptoms include confusion, irritability and aggression, mood swings, language breakdown, long-term memory loss, and the general withdrawal of the sufferer as their senses decline. Bodily functions are gradually lost, ultimately leading to death.

Until recently, the precise mechanisms behind the illness were poorly understood. In 2011, however, genes were identified that played a key role in biological pathways such as inflammation, cholesterol and cell transport systems. These provided new targets for potential treatments in the form of drugs, behavioral changes and other therapies. New ways of delivering drugs to the brain were also found, such as using the body's own exosomes as carriers.  After 15 years of research and clinical trials, the risk of developing the disease has now been cut by over 60%.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two types of medications — cholinesterase inhibitors (Aricept, Exelon, Razadyne) and memantine (Namenda) — to treat the cognitive symptoms (memory loss, confusion, and problems with thinking and reasoning) of Alzheimer's disease. With a better roadmap to guide progress with the remaining genes and biological processes, there is now real hope of actually curing the disease in the 2030s.