Interesting News On Alzheimer's

Forbes, the WaPo, and Reuters report on some research into Alzheimer's [and here is the press release].  From the WaPo version:

Injections of genetically altered cells into the brain appear to nourish ailing neurons and may slow the cognitive decline in patients with Alzheimer's disease, scientists reported Sunday.

However:

...Tuszynski and other experts cautioned that the study was designed to test the technique's safety, not its efficacy, so the hints of improvement — while tantalizing — are unreliable. And although the results do offer evidence that nerve growth hormones may prove useful, the surgical implantation of gene-altered cells is considered to be too complicated a technique for the routine delivery of those hormones.

"This would not be a practical way of going around treating 4 1/2 or 5 million Alzheimer's patients, although it would be a boon for neurosurgeons," said Zaven Khachaturian, a science adviser to the Alzheimer's Association in Chicago and former director of the Office of Alzheimer's Research at the National Institutes of Health. For that reason, a simpler system of getting the hormones into the brain is now being tested.

According to Forbes, the article is supposed to be available at the April Nature Medicine,  but I don't see it.

Here is CNN describing the study at the outset; the lead doctor, Mark H. Tuszynski, M.D., Ph.D,  has won some awards.

Comments

[anon]

Click on Advance Online Publication in the left margin to go to the page with the link for the clinical trial article on nerve growth factor gene therapy for Alzheimer disease.

[KBiel]

But I thought the magic stem cells from the embryo fairy was supposed to cure all neurological diseases. The Democrats have been telling us that we were killing all those poor Alzheimer patients because President Bush took his federal funds and wouldn't let them play with the embryos.