Now, a lot of the experts would say that the reason that the cholinesterase inhibitors don’t work very well is because we give them way too late. There are a lot of studies now that go on thinking about family history. There are a lot of studies now that are looking at people with very positive family histories and doing some very sophisticated blood test and test of spinal fluid to see if they … Now with amyloid PET scans, for instance, to see how much risk they have for developing Alzheimer's and starting those medications very early, way before they get symptoms of memory loss and other things. It will be interesting to see about that.
Almost all of the research done on treatment right now focuses on amyloid. Amyloid is a glob of cell debris that starts to gum up the works in the brain, makes it hard for nerve cells to communicate with each other. We know from the early days of Alzheimer's disease that these amyloid plaques, they’re called, are very prominent in people with Alzheimer's disease. Lots of effort has been made to make those plaques go away with the idea, if you can make the plaques go away, then a person would do better.
When you get right down to it, what we want to do is to keep those plaques from forming in the first place. We got to figure out what is it that makes the plaque occur. What causes those plaques to form? I think we don’t know that yet. There are a lot of studies thought, a lot of studies going on now. If you go to the Alzheimer's Association website, you can see a lot of clinical trials that are going on now. You can actually sign up for … You can put your profile in on the Alzheimer's Association website and they can match you with some of the trials that you might meet criteria for. A lot of opportunities for people and a lot of people that I see in the office, especially who are early in the disease or younger age are very in the clinical trials.
