Although there is no way to prevent or medically treat Alzheimer’s disease, experimental drugs and procedures are feverishly being tried. If an experimental treatment is available to your relative, check the reputability of the procedure and the qualifications of the researchers doing the study with the National Institute on Aging. As I mentioned earlier, the NIA coordinates research on Alzheimer’s disease. Then ask the researchers doing the study to carefully describe any risks of the treatment. While you might think (with some reason) that anything is worth a try, consider the possibility that the treatment might have a side effect that either is life threatening or makes things worse. Hopeless diagnoses such as Alzheimer’s disease render people vulnerable to dangerous or expensive quack remedies. So be on special guard against being victimized. If your relative is enrolled in a legitimate experimental study, be careful not to get your hopes up too far. At most the substances being tested purport to slow up the inexorable course of Alzheimer’s disease or improve the patient’s capacities a bit. No one claims to be able to restore everything that has been lost.

Several classes of drugs are now being tested on humans. The most intensively explored are medications that have the potential to stimulate the brain’s production of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. (The controversial drug THA, now undergoing clinical tests, is in this category.) For more than a decade scientists have known that a striking deficiency of this important neurotransmitter is characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.

One reason progress in developing a memory-stimulating pill has been slow is that drugs that might be effective have trouble penetrating the blood/brain barrier, the sheath protecting the brain from anything foreign. Another roadblock is that a memory-enhancing drug has the best chance of being effective when the disease is in its beginning stages and the neural destruction is not too far advanced. However, it is precisely at this time that Alzheimer’s disease can be so difficult to diagnose accurately.

The best way to keep informed about medical breakthroughs is to join the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association, an excellent national organization begun and run by families of people with the disease. In addition to sponsoring research, serving as advocates for victims and their families, and setting up most of the support groups for care-giving families, the ADRDA publishes a newsletter that summarizes the most promising recent research. Becoming a member of this organization will also help you keep your feet on the ground. To be newsworthy, those tantalizing newspaper accounts of promising new leads sometimes tend to err on the “important breakthrough” side; the truth is we are not very close to finding a real cure for this tragic disease.

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GENERAL HEALTH