Alzheimer’s Target Finally Questioned

The Washington Post published an excellent article, Alzheimers Research Target May Be a Dead End

For nearly 20 years the Beta Amyloid Theory of Alzheimer’s disease has been pursued to the exclusion of a number of other promising disease theories. Chemistry seems to have trumped the near religious zealotry that has delayed finding treatments and a cure for the disease. A study published in the Journal Nature Chemical Biology by a team of chemists at the University of California, San Francisco, found that these candidate drugs form large, unwieldy clumps themselves, rendering them useless as targeted therapy against amyloid in the brain. The author’s suggestion to neuroscientists investigating these agents as potential Alzheimer's therapies: "They should stop."

Perhaps the community can also stop wasting time on PET scanning.

Nothing is wrong with science failing; it is expected. What is wrong, is scientists blithely denying facts demonstrated by clinical experience.

It is time to play catch-up and really find out how to deal not only with Alzheimer’s but also dementia.