Vitamin E
may slow Alzheimer's progression
Washington:
Scientists have for the first time found that Vitamin E may slow functional
decline - problems with everyday tasks such as shopping, cooking and travelling
- in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's.
Researchers
from the faculty of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in US found that
vitamin E delays progression of functional decline in patients with
mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease by 19 per cent per year.
The
finding is valuable because vitamin E is easy to purchase at local drugstores
and it is also inexpensive, researchers said. The Veteran's Administration
Cooperative Randomised Trial, one of the largest and longest treatment trials
in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, examined the effects of
vitamin E, a dementia medicine - memantine - combination of both, or placebo on
Alzheimer's patients.
A
group of 613 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease were in the
study, which was launched in August 2007 and finished in September 2012 at 14
Veterans Affairs Medical Centers. Over the average follow-up time of 2.3 years,
participants receiving vitamin E had slower functional decline than those
receiving placebo, with the annual rate of decline in activities of daily
living reduced by 19 per cent.
This
treatment effect translates into a clinically meaningful delay in progression
in the vitamin E group of 6.2 months. Neither memantine nor the combination of
vitamin E and memantine showed clinical benefit in the trial.
"Since
the cholinesterase inhibitors [galantamine, donepezil, rivastigmine], we have
had very little to offer patients with mild-to-moderate dementia," said
Mary Sano, trial co-investigator, and professor in the department of
psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
"This
trial showed that vitamin E delays progression of functional decline by 19 per
cent per year, which translates into 6.2 months benefit over placebo,"
Sano said. Sano previously led a study on vitamin E in patients with moderately
severe Alzheimer's disease. She found that the vitamin slowed disease
progression in this group of patients as well.
"This
study is the first to show an added benefit for vitamin E in mild-to-moderate
disease," said Kenneth Davis, Chief Executive Officer and President of the
Mount Sinai Health System and Gustave L Levy Distinguished Professor.
"Now
that we have a strong clinical trial showing that vitamin E slows functional
decline and reduces the burdens on caregivers, vitamin E should be offered to
patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease," Davis said.
The
study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
02.01.2014
How chemotherapy could be more
effective for pancreatic cancer patients
Washington: Researchers believe that they have found an
effective strategy to make chemotherapy treatment more effective for pancreatic
cancer patients.
The research found pancreatic cancer cells may have their
own specialised energy supply that maintains calcium levels and keeps cancer
cells alive.
Maintaining a low concentration of calcium within cells is
vital to their survival and this is achieved by calcium pumps on the plasma
membrane.
This calcium pump, known as PMCA, is fuelled using ATP - the
key energy currency for many cellular processes.
Scientists used cells taken from human tumours and looked at
the effect of blocking each of these two energy sources in turn.
Their study showed that blocking mitochondrial metabolism
had no effect. However, when they blocked glycolysis , they saw a reduced
supply of ATP which inhibited the calcium pump, resulting in a toxic calcium
overload and ultimately cell death.
The research has been published in The Journal of Biological
Chemistry.
02.01.2014
No comments:
Post a Comment