Alzheimer’s will be as manageable as HIV within 10 years, Noble Prize-winning scientists predict.
Future dementia treatments will be taken before the condition develops to prevent symptoms rather than attempting to reverse them, according to Professor Michel Goedert, who was involved in discovering the importance of protein plaques in Alzheimer’s onset.
Professor Goedert, from the University of Cambridge, added: ‘Alzheimer’s will become something like HIV.
‘It’s still there but it has been contained or whittled down by drug treatments.
‘It will disappear as a major problem from society.’
Alzheimer’s disease affects around 5.5 million people in the US and 850,000 in the UK. Most sufferers live just eight-to-10 years after their diagnosis.
Alzheimer’s disease will one day be as manageable as HIV, scientists claim (stock)
‘In 10 years we will have a completely different picture’
Professor Goedert believes drugs under investigation for Alzheimer’s often fail due to them being taken too late into the disease’s progression.
His colleague Professor Bart De Strooper of University College London, with whom he shares the four-million euro Noble-Prize money, added: ‘The mistakes we have made is the trials is that treatment has been given too late.
‘It’s like popping a statin to stop a heart attack.
‘But when we first started we knew almost nothing about Alzhiemer’s and now we understand a huge amount.
‘In 10 years we will have a completely different picture.’
The scientists have been credited by the Noble-Prize organisers for changing the way doctors approach Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related brain disorders.
Professor Anders Bjorklund, chairman of the Lundbeck Foundation Brain Prize selection committee, said: ‘These outstanding scientists have been rewarded for their fundamental discoveries unravelling molecular and genetic causes of the disease that have provided a basis for the current attempts to diagnose, treat and possibly even prevent neurodegenerative brain diseases.’
Is HIV manageable?
In 1996, it was discovered that a combination of drugs could prevent the HIV virus from spreading and replicating.
This allows the immune system to recover and fight off opportunistic diseases, like pneumonia.
Such a discovery prevents HIV-infected people from developing AIDS, which occurs when the immune system is so severely damaged it cannot fight off illnesses.
Patients now take a single tablet every day that contains multiple drugs as soon as they diagnosed. This is a lifelong treatment.
Since 2012, the US drug-approving body Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted a license for the preventative treatment pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).
This is for people at a high risk of HIV infection, such as those with an affected partner.
Taking a single tablet every day helps to prevent HIV-infected people from developing AIDS
Brain surgery may ‘spread’ Alzheimer’s disease
This comes after research released last month suggested brain surgery may ‘spread’ Alzheimer’s disease.
Amyloid proteins, which have previously been associated with the condition, may be transmitted on poorly cleaned surgical instruments used during such procedures, a study by University College London implies.
After analysing four people aged 30-to-57 with brain bleeds caused by the build-up of amyloid plaques, researchers discovered they all underwent brain surgery when they were younger.
This may explain why the amyloid protein, which normally only affects people over 65, accumulated in the younger patients, the scientists add.
Previous studies suggest tiny amounts of amyloid proteins can ‘stick’ to steel wires and be transmitted into animals’ brains.
Past findings also show abnormal proteins responsible for the degenerative brain disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease can be transmitted between patients during certain medical procedures.
The researchers add, however, the build-up of amyloid proteins does not necessarily indicate Alzheimer’s disease, with none of the study’s participants showing signs of early-onset dementia.