WASHINGTON, DC—What would it take to evaluate the range of suggested treatments to
postpone, reduce, or completely prevent the clinical
onset of Alzheimer’s disease as quickly as possible?
How can neurologists find and support the approval
of drugs that work within the next 10 years? To
answer these questions, Eric Reiman, MD, Executive Director of the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute
(BAI) in Phoenix, and his colleagues Pierre Tariot,
MD, and Jessica Langbaum, PhD, developed the Alzheimer’s Prevention Initiative (API) with valuable
input from numerous academic, industry, regulatory, and other stakeholders. Dr. Reiman described
API’s efforts at the 2015 Alzheimer’s Association
International Conference.
Genotyping Study Provides Blueprint for Research
There are many promising but unproven prevention
therapies, Dr. Reiman noted. They include lifestyle
and dietary changes; dietary supplements; and repur-
poseable medications, such as those currently used
for cholesterol or hypertension, as well as a growing
number of investigational disease-modifying agents.
“A therapy that delays the clinical onset of Alzheim-
er’s disease by only five years without also increasing
lifespan has the potential to reduce the number of
afflicted individuals by half. The hope is that we can
do even better than that.”
As these treatments may need to be started before
the clinical onset of symptoms to be effective, the vast
resources required to test them in clinical trials can
What Will It Take to
End Alzheimer’s Disease?
Serving the Neurology Community Since 1993
continued on page 3
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