
What’s Old Is New Again!:
So one miracle drug that reversed Alzheimer’s Disease in trials is something we’ve told you about before.
We’ve also told you about another miracle drug that’s a little more famous.
Well researchers at the Gladstone Institutes are throwing us another curveball that’s like a combination of the two strangely-enough.
A not-so-famous cousin of a drug we all know may have surprising beneficial properties similar to both of these…
Reversing Alzheimer’s. Maybe Ancient Man Wasn’t So Stupid:
So, unlike many drugs we have like the super-fancy ones from the Enbrel study, a few of them are old.
-Really old.
And one of the oldest is Aspirin; -or some form of the White Willow tree.
No wonder why beavers are so wise…
But one of the counter-intuitive consequences of all the fancy New drugs we get,
Is that we completely forget about the old ones. -And in this case, that’s a big problem.
Researchers Rediscover Aspirin’s Forgotten Cousin:
Until some crafty researchers stepped-up and found the forgotten-cousin of Aspirin,
A drug called Salsalate that used to be prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis.
No word on exactly why & how they came up with the idea, but it was a freaking miracle.
Because Alzheimer’s Disease presents 2 main problems:
Beta-Amyloid Plaques from a brain sewer-system that’s not working right,
And Tau Proteins that poison & injure brain-cells.
Alzheimer’s Tau Proteins Neutralized With An Anti-Inflammatory:
The second is the one they were able to target.
And they did that in a couple very specific and important ways.
It’s one thing to stop a disease in its tracks,
But still leave the accumulated-damage in the host, which would suck.
It’s quite another thing to stop the disease, And then Reverse all or most of the damage it did.
And by using this crazy-old drug that even the father of medicine, Hippocrates spoke of, that’s just what they did.
In every one of the test animals Dr. Li Gan’s team worked on, the drug appeared to completely reverse the Alzheimer’s-related memory-loss they had.
Stopping Is One Thing, Reversing Is Another:
-This part of amazing is really hard to overstate, because most of the time you stop a disease from progressing, you don’t get to reverse the damage that was already done. So that part of it alone really is a shot heard round the world!
Not only that, but this drug Salsalate blocks a potentially-harmful enzyme and stops the most dangerous chemical-reaction that makes Tau Proteins into something dangerous & hard to fight.
The scope of win on this is hard to fully sketch-out because the team stopped so many bad things from happening.
Another great part of the win is that this drug seems to specifically aid the part of the brain most-crucial to memory in the first place!
Harmful Enzyme Stopped, Hippocampus Saved:
I guess the only way the team’s work could be any more successful is if it clears out the Beta-Amyloid plaques also.
-But that would probably be asking too much.
And it even happened with low-doses of Salsalate over just two months time. So they weren’t creating another hazard by Mega-Dosing the crap out of things, either.
I don’t know if they had Alzheimer’s in 1828 when the main extract of white willow bark was first perfected, but it’s surprising that it’s taken even this long to find the benefits of Salsalate.
But I guess that’s what we meant before when it seems the only viable solutions are new formulations.
A New Way To Fight, And It’s Already Pre-Approved:
Even better than that? -No current Alzheimer’s or Dementia drug in-development even bothers with Taus.
They all go after Beta-Amyloid. So this development becomes even more valuable in that light.
The other great piece of news comes in the form of pre-approval.
Salsalate is a drug that’s been generally regarded as safe & approved for some treatments for a very long time now.
-So there should be no giant set of Big Pharma+FDA hurdles to go through.
Just Set Up The Trials & Go!:
Just set up some trials with real human patients & see how it works!
The timeframe to actual results should therefore be pretty freaking small.
So here’s to inventive, intrepid researchers looking at every available angle to beat tough diseases,
Even the ones everyone thought were too old & out-of-favor.
Check out the details on Gan’s very promising study work to stop Alzheimer’s & reverse memory-loss from it in the Links Below:
Photo Credits: “Apothecary Now”, by Simon Harrod
Links:
• Source: Gladstone Institute
• via: Telegraph UK
• Source Study: Nature-Critical role of acetylation in tau-mediated neurodegeneration and cognitive deficits
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