Dr. Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad

Researchers say they have a number of promising leads in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. But they acknowledge that a breakthrough still is years away.

“I feel we’re on the verge of very exciting knowledge about how to treat Alzheimer’s, and it will pay off,” said Dr. Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, Ph.D., director of National Institute on Aging’s Division of Neuroscience. “But not in the next few years, I’m sorry to say.”

Dr. Morrison-Bogorad, who heads the country’s Alzheimer’s disease research program, said the stakes are high. A breakthrough just being able to delay brain degeneration caused by Alzheimer’s disease would have enormous benefit.

Interventions to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s by just one year would reduce the projected number of cases in 2050 by 9.2 million, according to research published last year in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Such news gives hope to families like Craig and Debbie Smith, of Gordon County, Ga.

“We’re excited about vaccine trials going on now,” said Mr. Smith. “It seems very promising. But we know you can’t put a timetable on research.”

The “vaccine” is part of recent research with amyloid, a protein that builds up in the brain and may trigger Alzheimer’s, Dr. Morrison-Bogorad said.

The amyloid was injected into mice predisposed to develop early-onset Alzheimer’s. Researchers believe the protein induced the mice to naturally produce antibodies that actually reduced the formation of the plaques in the mice brains, she said.

“This was an absolutely mind-stopping result,” the doctor said. But the human trial had to be stopped because the injection caused a damaging inflammatory response in humans. New trials are working to minimizes that inflammatory response, she said.

Lifestyle and CULTURE impacts

There’s even hope for treatment in everyday items: Curcumin, an antioxidant in yellow curry, is now being tested in animals and will move into clinical trials to see if it might prevent Alzheimer’s from progressing, experts said.

In India, where yellow curry is a large part of the folk medicine and the diet, persons between the ages of 70 and 79 have less than a quarter the Alzheimer’s cases of similar ages in the U.S. population, said Dr. John Standridge, director of the geriatric medicine fellowship program at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Chattanooga.

Dr. Morrison-Bogorad said researchers had hoped that Vitamin E and anti-inflammatory medications might stop the formation of the protein tangles and plaques that are the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s brains, but results of clinical trials done in Alzheimer’s patients did not seem to have an effect.

Not all research efforts are medicine-based: Evidence shows high cholesterol and high blood pressure can increase the risk for dementia, leading to questions of whether interventions for heart disease and diabetes could also lower the risk for Alzheimer’s, Dr. Morrison-Bogorad said.

The Alzheimer’s solution likely will be a combination of lifestyle interventions such as regular exercise and dietary changes, combined with a medical treatment, not one “little white pill,” Dr. Morrison-Bogorad said.

“I get as upset as anyone that we don’t have a little white pill in our hands right now that we can give to everyone with Alzheimer’s or everyone at risk for it,” she said. “But it’s just because it’s so complicated. ... We just need more research in order to understand it better.”

Staff writer Pam Sohn contributed to this story.