CBS News – “I just know that my brain’s not right,” said Carrie Richardson, 44. “And so, I hate it. I just want it to be normal.”
At 41, Carrie developed early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The condition is caused by rare genetic mutations that essentially guarantee a person will develop the disease.
Her mother, Mary Salter, of Montgomery, Alabama, knows the toll of the disease all too well. “I’ve lost seven family members from the ages of 37 to 44,” she said … including her son, Bryan, who died last year.
Mary, Carrie, and Carrie’s daughter Hannah have been coming to the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to participate in some of the world’s first clinical trials in Alzheimer’s prevention. “It’s the least I can do to help,” said Hannah. “I feel like I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do it.”
Dr. Randy Bateman, who leads international clinical trials at WashU Medicine, said, “Now we have a chance to change the course of the disease in a way we’ve never been able to do before.”
One reason for Bateman’s optimism: For the first time, there’s finally success treating mild Alzheimer’s with medication that removes amyloid plaques – the protein deposits that build up on the outside of nerve cells in the brain, interfering with memory and thinking. These drugs have been shown to slow cognitive decline.
“People who had the plaques removed are 30 percent better than the people who didn’t have the plaques removed,” Bateman said. “It doesn’t stop the dementia. Dementia still continues, but at a slower rate.”
The point of the trials, Bateman said, is to study what happens when treatment is started even before Alzheimer’s symptoms are evident:
“If you look at the people who are treated in these trials, the people who are at the earlier stages, the earlier stage you go, the better off they do. Some of them actually have been stable. And so, what this suggests is that timing is critically important.”
