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Dementia is a rapidly growing public health problem worldwide. Fifty million people suffer from dementia, and in the next 30 years this number is expected to triple.
Researchers are looking for ways to treat or prevent dementia and a promising clinical trial is underway in the United States.
Dementia is not a normal phenomenon of aging, but age is a huge risk factor. Regular exercise, a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar help prevent dementia as you get older
As people around the world live longer, health organizations and researchers are looking for ways to prevent, stop, or treat dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, one of the most common types of dementia .
Promising clinical trial
At 56, David Shorr has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. He is about to undergo a new procedure that could treat the early stage of Alzheimer's. He is accompanied by his doctor, Vibhor Krishna, neurosurgeon at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center.
The procedure that Shorr is about to do involves sound waves. Ultrasound targets and opens the blood-brain barrier – a protective layer that protects the brain from infections. But Krishna says that the barrier also makes it difficult to treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.
"The opening of the blood-brain barrier allows us to access more brain tissue and to be able to increase the efficacy or bioavailability of therapeutic agents," said Krishna.
Shorr and his wife, Kim, were willing to try any new treatment that could help with his dementia. Kim describes the couple's reaction when he received a call inviting Shorr to participate in a clinical trial.
"There is this trial. Would you be interested? She said describing the call. "And without really knowing what it was, we said, of course."
Ultrasound targets the accumulation of proteins
Shorr became one of the 10 patients enrolled in the study. The test tests MRI-guided imaging to target the part of the brain responsible for memory and cognition. Krishna explains that patients with Alzheimer's disease have an accumulation of toxic proteins called amyloid.
"Larger deposits of amyloid go hand in hand with loss of function in Alzheimer's disease," he said.
Krishna says that this procedure could allow a patient's immune system to get rid of some of the amyloid.
In this procedure, the ultrasonic wave pulses cause an expansion and contraction of microscopic bubbles in the brain.
"The increase and decrease in the size of these microbubbles mechanically open the blood-brain barrier," said Krishna.
The patient is awake during the procedure.
The study could help others
The opening of the barrier may one day allow doctors to deliver drugs directly to the site of the disease.
Kim Shorr realizes that her husband may not benefit from this treatment.
"We hope it can help, but we also know it may help somebody else," she said.
Shorr is happy to be part of a study that could help others in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, even if it does not help.
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