A New Antihistamine is Suddenly the Best Treatment for Dementia and Alzheimer's
Read up on dementia and Alzheimer's at any major medical website today, and you are sure to be told over and over again that Alzheimer's is caused by plaque that forms on the brain, and also that it is the molecule called beta amyloid in the brain that precipitates that plaque. Most current treatment for dementia and Alzheimer's is directed at prescribing drugs that are efficient at cleaning the brain up of beta amyloid, and loosening whatever plaque it brings. Last year, though, scientists in Europe were presented with a new possibility, that seemed a stretch at best. There is a Russian drug, an antihistamine called dimebolin; the drug basically works to raise the levels of the beta amyloid molecule - the very molecule in the brain that other drug makers in the world work so hard to try to eliminate. It would be easy to brush this off as hopelessly misguided, only the drug is twice as effective as anything they've done so far with the traditional approach.
No medical researcher up to now, has tried to obtain results by giving a patient more of the molecule. And yet, the attempt that raises levels in the brain with the dimebolin actually brings improvements that have been verified in two different laboratories. Treatment for dementia done with this drug, visibly slows down, and also reverses, cognitive impairment. What is more, the drug's effects last twice as long as any other conventional therapy. So what does this mean for the way we approach treatment for dementia and Alzheimer's around the world now? To begin with, all the work that has been done so far, aiming solely to eliminate the beta amyloid molecule in the brain, have to be abandoned. And the whole idea that the plaque brought on by beta amyloid is what is at the root of dementia and Alzheimer's, will have to be scrapped too Why, it might actually be dangerous to clear plaque. It is even possible now, to believe that the plaque is actually a substance that keeps all the harmful stuff arriving at the brain, safely shut up inside the sticky substance. The-plaque dissolving drugs that we give people in the name of a treatment for dementia and Alzheimer's, actually just release the harmful toxins back into the brain, that our metabolism tries so hard to keep out. It might actually be opening the brain's Pandora's box.
No one really knows what to make of all this.The scientists believe it's too early to say; it is possible that the new dimebolin drug only raises levels of beta amyloid temporarily, and lowers levels efficiently over a long period of time. It just goes to say, how rudimentary our understanding of the treatment for dementia and Alzheimer's really is. Dimebolin has been sold for years, under the brand name Dimebon, as a drug for hay fever and other assorted allergies. Whatever the mechanism, it does undeniably help Alzheimer's patients reverse quite a bit of their memory loss. For now, this is the best we can do in our treatment for dementia and Alzheimer's.