SKIN CANCER DRUG 'REVERSES ALZHEIMER'S' ? The Jolly ...

A drug commonly used to fight skin cancer could start to reverse Alzheimer?s disease in a matter of hours, a laboratory study indicates.

Researchers have described the discovery as an ?unprecedented finding? that holds out ?the potential promise of a therapy for Alzheimer?s?.

However, they cautioned that their study was only in mice, and much more needed to be done to determine if bexarotene worked to combat the degenerative brain disease in humans.

Drugs currently licensed for Alzheimer?s only slow its progress; they do not reverse its seemingly inexorable course.

But neuroscientists at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, found bexarotene attacked what doctors call the pathology of the disease ? its biological causes.

They found the mice?s levels of soluable amyloid beta ? now thought to cause brain cells to die in Alzheimer?s patients ? dropped by 25 per cent within six hours of being fed the drug.

And after three days they remembered how to build a nest from tissue paper which they had forgotten because of the build up of amyloid.

The researchers also found half of the mice?s amyloid brain plaques, a hallmark of disease, had been cleared within 72 hours, and eventually three-quarters disappeared.

They explained bexarotene, normally used to shrink tumours, worked by stimulating levels of a protein that carries cholesterol around the brain, called Apolipoprotein E (ApoE).

Higher levels of ApoE enable clearance of amyloid beta proteins, which if left unchecked aggregate into the dense plaques found on the brains of those with Alzheimer?s. Results are published in the journal Science Express.

For the full article: Telegraph.co.uk

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