News From the End of Life: Finding may lead to Alzheimer’s treatment
Over-the-counter pain relievers like Advil and Motrin appear to protect against Alzheimer’s disease by thwarting production of a key protein found in the disease’s brain-clogging deposits, a study has found.
Since 1997, scientists have noted that some people who regularly take large amounts of ibuprofen and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) for aches and pains run a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s.
Researchers said the latest findings could one day lead to new treatments that reduce the formation of brain deposits, or plaques, without toxic side effects. "If the findings can be extended to people, these drugs could join the Ivy League of potential treatments" for Alzheimer’s, said molecular biologist Bart De Strooper, MD, of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. The findings were published in the Nov. 8 issue of the journal Nature.
Researchers had thought that NSAIDs protected against Alzheimer’s by reducing inflammation. Instead, the study shows that the drugs inhibit production of a protein, amyloid-beta 42, which is found in the tangled plaques that clog and kill the brain cells of Alzheimer’s disease victims.
The lowered protein level was found both in the test tube and in the brains of mice. The researchers did not report whether the mice showed fewer actual brain plaques, however. "Our study provides the first explanation as to why nonsteroidals may be working in Alzheimer’s disease," said Dr. Edward Koo, MD, a neurologist at the University of California at San Diego who led the research. "That, in itself, is not a big leap, but some of the surprises in the data may be the bigger leap," he said.
Koo and his colleagues worked with cells taken from mice that had been genetically altered to have a disease similar to Alzheimer’s. Treating the mice with ibuprofen and two other NSAIDs was found to inhibit the production of the amyloid-beta 42 protein by as much as 80%. Several other pain relievers, including aspirin, showed no such effect.
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