Humanity is always striving for the next cure. Unfortunately, it’s rarely about important issues. That’s why in the US, every 67 seconds, a person develops Alzheimer’s. A total of 5 million Americans that have the disease and yearly, One half million deaths occur as a result. Insulin Nasal Spray Could Cure Alzheimer ‘s disease, a recent study shows.
But faith and hard work bring novelty and improvement, open doors and make history. Researchers from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC say that Mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease are not impossible to cure anymore. A recent study that involved 60 people shows that a man-made form of insulin, insulin detemir, has longer lasting effects in comparison with the regular one.
The volunteers were given three sorts of dosage: 20 UI (international units) of insulin detemir, 40 UI, and 20 UI of placebo. It was administrated nasally, through an usual nasal drug delivery device. The results were astonishing: after 21 days, those who received 40 UI of medicine showed unbelievably better results on their memory tests; their capacity of retaining and associating verbal and visual information improved. However, the others, with 20 UI, placebo or insulin, haven’t shown remarkable changes. The results were found even more revealing in the case of the patients that had APOE-e4 genes, that are associated with increased risk of Alzheimer’s. These patients in particular were the ones who didn’t have a positive response to any other treatment and intervention whatsoever.
As far as the negative effects are concerned, the study says that there weren’t shown any major ones, but minor in some cases, and none in others.
The research got published in the “Journal of Alzheimer’s disease”.
Suzanne Craft, Ph.D., a professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and lead author of the study said that the effects of insulin detemir on Alzheimer’s disease patients need further investigations and that the results of this research in particular is a huge motivation for future studies.
“Alzheimer’s is a devastating illness, for which even small therapeutic gains have the potential to improve quality of life and significantly reduce the overall burden for patients, families, and society. Future studies are warranted to examine the safety and efficacy of this promising treatment.”
Image Source: BP