Two well-known medicines, approved a decade ago and commonly used drugs not only reverse brain damage produced by the disease, but the same combo therapy can also improve cognition, says new study.
Although the research has so far only been done on animals, the results are promising: it appears that a combination of two drugs, both of which are already on the market and have distinct applications, may be able to kill one of the key destroyers of Alzheimer’s disease.
According to preliminary research, two popular drugs that may be lying in your medical box are gemfibrosil, an old cholesterol-lowering drug, and retinoic acid, a vitamin A derivative.
The study was published in the journal “Science Translational Medicine.”
Gemfibrosil is marketed as Lopid, and while it is still available, it is rarely recommended. To decrease cholesterol, doctors prefer to prescribe statins. Retinoic acid has been used in a variety of formulations to treat a variety of ailments, including acne, psoriasis, and even cancer.
Both medicines have the ability to act on the brain’s astrocytes (cells that were originally named after their resemblance to stars). They’re also heavily implicated in a brain-destructive process.
The formation of amyloid-beta (Aβ), the plaque that kills neurons, may be caused by astrocytes, according to researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. As a result, these cells contribute to the damaging events that occur as a result of Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers discovered that combining gemfibrozil and retinoic acid causes astrocytes to reverse their malignancy and reduce amyloid beta levels in the brain, boosting cognitive performance. The findings suggest that these drugs could be used to try to encourage astrocytes to play a helpful function, acting as “cleaning machines” for Aβ, removing plaque buildup and avoiding Alzheimer’s from harming the brain in the not-too-distant future.
“From a therapeutic angle, these results suggest that low-dose [gemfibrozil and retinoic acid]
might be repurposed as a treatment for reducing the plaque burden and improving cognition,” says Sumita Raha, first author of the paper.
“Astrocytes are a type of glial cell that are implicated in the buildup of amyloid beta in Alzheimer’s disease,” Raha added about both drugs.
Instead of being directly involved in the development of Aβ accumulation, she and her Rush Medical Center colleagues propose that astrocytes may be stimulated to pick up and destroy Aβ fibers with an orally consumed combination of medications that are licenced for other reasons.
Earlier, Kalipada Pahan, the present study’s lead author, discovered that combining gemfibrozil and retinoic acid enhanced lysosome production in mouse brain cells. Lysosomes are organelles that contain digestive enzymes and are important in the breakdown of extraneous or worn-out cell elements.
Raha, Pahan, and colleagues discovered that gemfibrosil and retinoic acid caused mouse astrocytes to absorb more beta amyloid from the outside. Their investigations found that the medication combination activated a receptor known as PPARα, which urged astrocytes to eliminate the plaque-causing amyloid.
PPARα is an abbreviation for peroxisome proliferator activated receptor alpha. PPARα is a transcription factor that controls the expression of genes involved in fatty acid oxidation and is also a key regulator of energy balance. PPARα is required for the removal of beta amyloid, Aβ.
“We found that the same combination of gemfibrosil and retinoic acid enhanced the uptake of Aβ from the extracellular space and its subsequent degradation in astrocytes through a PPARα-dependent pathway,” Raha asserted.
“These findings uncover a new function of PPARα in stimulating astroglial uptake and degradation of Aβ and suggest possible repurposing of gemfibrosil-retinoic acid combination therapy for Alzheimer’s disease.”
Image Credit: Getty
You were reading: Is there a treatment for Alzheimer’s that has been kept secret for decades?