Dementia affects 50 million people worldwide, and Alzheimer's is among the leading causes. Researchers in Australia think a new breakthrough could fundamentally change the way the disease is treated.
Using focused therapeutic ultrasound on mice, a team from the Queensland Brain Institute in Australia have come up with a way to open up the brain-barrier and allow waste removal cells to access and eliminate the neurotoxic amyloid plaques responsible for destroying brain synapses and causing cognitive decline in Alzheimer's patients.
Once treated, their test mice showed improved performance in three memory tasks: a maze, a new object recognition test, and a memory test to avoid certain places.
Clearing the build-up of defective beta-amyloid and tau proteins from a patient's brain is an important step in treating Alzheimer's, but the brain-barrier prevents traditional medicine from accessing them. By using focused ultrasound to open up the barrier and allow waste removal - microglilia - cells to get in and clear out the toxic clumps, the researchers have been able to fully restore the memories of 75 percent of their test mice, with zero damage to surrounding tissue.
The researchers are extremely excited about the potential for focused ultrasound to revolutionize Alzheimer's treatment, and also point to the financial benefits of their approach.
"With an aging population placing an increasing burden on health systems, an important factor is cost. Other potential drug treatments using antibodies will be expensive," explained Dr. Jürgen Götz, study co-author and researcher from the University of Queensland, in a statement.
The research was funded by a $9 million investment by the Australian government in focused ultrasound. Part of the Advance Queensland initiative to increase and nurture scientific research conducted in Australia.
The researchers hope to have human trials underway by 2017.
