Posted on 07/20/2008 10:04:28 PM PDT by neverdem
A drug injected into the spine has produced rapid improvements in verbal fluency in a trial of 12 patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
Etanercept (Enbrel), an antiTNF drug developed to treat rheumatoid arthritis, transformed the behaviour of some patients in a matter of minutes, the researchers say.
The results, published in BMC Neurology, are the latest in a series of bold claims made by Edward Tobinick, from a private medical group in Los Angeles, and Hyman Gross, of the University of Southern California.
Their theory is that TNF is used in the brain to regulate the transmission of nerve impulses. They say that in Alzheimer’s high levels of TNF interfere with this process, so suppressing TNF with Enbrel should cause a reduction in Alzheimer’s symptoms...
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
I understand that a single dose of this stuff is very expensive and you have to take it on a regular basis...
It’s extremely expensive. These are monoclonal antibodies. You have to engineer lab animals to produce them, and these antibodies are then harvested.
Basically, you have a lab of designer rats for each of these drugs produced. When the rat dies, so dies a source of drug.
I wonder if its just a short term anti-inflammatory effect similar to plain prednisone. Way too expensive to be practical.
I work with a Pediatric Rheumatologist who uses Enbrel in many of his patients, and has done so for several years now. It works great, but it’s effects sometimes seem to fade off eventually, and another med needs to be used (usually Humira). And side effects are minimal. I have yet to see any of the kids on it get a life-threatening infection, although that’s definitely possible. Of course this is strictly anecdotal.
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