Alzheimer’s has long been considered irreversible, but new research challenges that assumption. Scientists discovered that severe drops in the brain’s energy supply help drive the disease—and restoring that balance can reverse damage, even in advanced cases. In mouse models, treatment repaired brain pathology, restored cognitive function, and normalized Alzheimer’s biomarkers. The results offer fresh hope that recovery may be possible.

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Like in a big city. In our organism, if the collection of waste is blocked, it accumulates. If the lack of cleanliness affects the nerve cells, of course, this can have repercussions. So what? Then it makes sense to rely on those who naturally help certain neurons to eliminate the tau protein, which is linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

The ‘scavenger’ protein is produced as a result of instructions in the DNA gene that, in turn, stimulates the production of a kind of invisible protein ‘tag’ (CRL5SOCS4) for tau.

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After being told they were in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, some of Dr Majid Fotuhi’s patients were preparing to put their affairs in order. Then his advice changed everything for them. 

One of the leading neuroscientists in America, Fotuhi, 63, fled post-revolutionary Iran for Canada in 1982, before moving to the US and completing his PhD in neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University. He attended Harvard Medical School, returning to Johns Hopkins for his neurology residency. There, in the early 2000s, that he began to question the prevailing orthodoxy. 

He realised that many people were being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s who didn’t yet need to be. “They had treatable conditions that were contributing to cognitive decline, yet their problems were being put down to plaques and tangles,” he says.

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For decades, families affected by Alzheimer’s have had little more than hope to cling to.  

Today, however, there are treatments that can slow the progression of early-stage Alzheimer’s. After years of setback and frustration, finally there are medicines that change the trajectory of the disease rather than simply managing symptoms. 

We’ve proven that science can address the issue. Now the challenge we face is practical. 

New treatments 

In the UK, these new treatments are not available in the NHS. If you want them, you have to pay for them. That’s because of the way the NHS makes decisions about what medicines it will fund – this approach aims to balance the costs to the NHS against the benefits of any treatment. In the case of two new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease neither was judged as “cost effective”.  

New treatments pose real challenges for health systems when making these decisions. The data about them is limited – usually just from a clinical trial over a fixed period in group of participants who don’t fully reflect the people who will use the treatment in the health system. It’s no surprise then that the first treatments to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s would pose uncertainties about their longer-term use in the real world.  

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