Two drugs for dementia

Michael Ellenbogen

I di not know until today thye also have a drug in China that was approved. So we have two drugs on the market for now.

Crushed

You can read the key article at

  https://alzres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13195-021-00795-7

 Scientifically it is a worthwhile research
Clinical significance is not clear 
No Clinical difference was detected  

Michael Ellenbogen

Thanks I may have read it but I must have forgotten.

 

Today at Davos they were talking about the difference in MMSE score 14 Vs 30. They found people who had 30 actually had real cognitive issues and people at 14 who did not have it. They were impacted by other issues that contributed to the low score. While I knew that was only used as bassline the test is worse then I ever thought. It also was different based on different geographic location even in the same country. 

Crushed

I cut my technical eyeteeth at NBS/NIST working on replacing worthless technical test standards.  I've lectured on it all over the world.     The MMSE has the same fundamental error as Grade point averages.   It does not comply with the "equal interval hypothesis"  Steven Gould covered much the same ground in the "Mismeasure of Man"    It's the reason you cant "average" gold silver and Bronze medals at the Olympics.

Actually understanding math is critical to public safety (NB many engineers do not understand mathematics)  I have found this out after 20 years in an Engineering school.  They do numbers, not Math.  They routinely don't ask what the numbers mean.  Same problem with he MMSE   

The screaming morons who talk about "herd immunity"  and percentages do not understand  that it does not apply to non stochastic illnesses.  Covid infections are not randomly distributed.   They are in clumps and clusters among the unvaccinated  who spread the disease to one another 
That is why Florida had such a horrendous death rate in August and September compared to New York despite roughly similar levels of vaccination.     In Florida the unvaccinated and anti maskers cluster together 

Alzheimer's is incredibly difficult to reduce to usable mathematical data

 
  

Rescue mom

Crushed, just curious (not arguing)…why do they cluster more in FL than in NY? I can think of some demographic clusters here in FL.but they are so broad I can’t think how they’d be useful. Like, there’s significant clustering by neighborhood cost, and by age and/or income, but more so in FL than elsewhere?

Lane Simonian

To add to what Crushed said and to what is in his link: the drug is called GV-971 and has been approved for conditional use is China.  It is undergoing phase 3 clinical trial in various other parts of the world; the results from which might be known in about 2025 or 2026. 

GV-971 is an oligosaccharide derived from brown seaweed.  There is growing evidence that oligosaccharides and polysaccharides from seaweed and from other sources may be an effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease.  

Abstract: Neurodegenerative diseases are among the most widespread diseases affecting humans, and the number of patients is only rising. Seaweed polysaccharide extracts show significant neuroprotective and reparative activities. Seaweed polysaccharides might provide the next big breakthrough in neurodegenerative disease treatment. This paper reviews the applications of seaweed polysaccharides as potential treatments of neurodegenerative diseases. The particular focus is on fucoidan, ulvan, and their derivatives as potential agents to treat Alzheimer’s disease. This review provides a critical update on the progress in this important research area.

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-3397/19/2/89

Oligosaccharides and polysaccharides indirectly reduce oxidative stress in the brain by lowering cholesterol in the brain and directly reduce oxidative stress in the brain by scavenging peroxynitrite.

Trappsol Cyclo is an oligosaccharide that will be tested in a phase two trial beginning next year.  To date, evidence for the effectiveness of the  drug is limited to only one person:

After 18 months, the patient showed neurologic and cognitive stability: this is a positive outcome given that persons with Alzheimer’s Disease dementia are generally expected to decline during an 18-month timeframe. Speech fluency also improved as documented by the treating physician’s report of a decrease in latency to word-finding. In addition, mood and behavioral features of the disease improved, such as less agitation, as noted by the patient, the patient’s family and the treating physician.

For GV-971,  ADAS-cog scores improved by 2.7 points at 36 weeks (which is just shy of being clinically significant).  For panax/Korean red ginseng, which contains a series of antioxidants including polysaccharides, saponins, and polyphenols, the improvement in ADAS-cog scores at 36 weeks was 7 points.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3659550/

There may be even more effective combinations of compounds, drugs, and natural products for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

Michael Ellenbogen

Your description here reminded me for sure Lane that I knew about it. Go figure I forgot something. That seems to be happing a lot more these days.

Crushed

Rescue mom wrote:

Crushed, just curious (not arguing)…why do they cluster more in FL than in NY? I can think of some demographic clusters here in FL.but they are so broad I can’t think how they’d be useful. Like, there’s significant clustering by neighborhood cost, and by age and/or income, but more so in FL than elsewhere?

Anti vaxxers and anti maskers are the core De Santis base.  They go to the same churches and sports bars and events.  Easy to find at the zip code level that is why Florida hides the data so thoroughly.   you see some on the pages of a Florida epidemiologist https://covid19florida.mystrikingly.com/

All the other excuses fall flat.  No its not recent immigrants, or they would have a whole lot of recent dead immigrant bodies  California has more old people than Florida but many fewer deaths. Florida since March 2020 has the highest death rate in the vaccinated world

Since March 1 when vaccines started affecting death rates
New York has 500 deaths per million  
Florida has 1277.    that is a staggering difference .
Texas another anti vaxer state  1007 Dead per million
California is 551 per million 

These are gigantic differences in the 4 largest states States that pander to anti vaxxers and anti maskers kill a lot more people
Since Alzheimers patients are on the front line in many cases we should be concerned 
 Zip code clusters are being worked on right now

   
  

jfkoc

I think it would behelpful to have the MMSE conversation on a separate thread. It is always given too much weight IMO.