A prescription drug for treat arthitis may be able to help in the fight against Alzheimer's

  In Spain there are some 700,000 people with Alzheimer's for up to 200,000 may be undiagnosed. Worldwide, this figure rises to 47.5 million, according to the World Health Organization. Now, American researchers have shown that a drug already used to treat rheumatoid arthritis can reverse dysfunctions observed in this neurodegenerative disease in mice.

  Salsalate, a drug commonly used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, could in the future be part of the therapeutic arsenal for treating Alzheimer's disease. According to a study published in "Nature Medicine", this available drug reversed dysfunction related to the tau protein, one of the related neurodegenerative disorder, in an animal model of frontotemporal dementia.

Researchers at the Gladstone Institute (USA) have found that the drug prevents accumulation of tau protein in the brain and cognitive impairment protects the characteristic of Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia. Specifically inhibit tau acetylation, a chemical process by which the function and properties of a protein is altered. Researchers have found that tau protein is an especially toxic acetylated form of the protein, leading to neurodegeneration and cognitive deficits.

  In their work they found that salsalate reversed successfully these effects in a mouse model of frontotemporal dementia by reducing tau levels in the brain, recovering memory connections and protecting against atrophy of the hippocampus, an important region of training memory that is affected by dementia. Although it is known for some time that the tau protein is one of the processes responsible for dementia, so far had found no treatment to avoid its effects.

  The application of this new drug to treat Alzheimer's could take place very soon. So says Eric Verdin, a researcher of the team, said that "considering that salsalate is a drug already approved a long history of a reasonable safety profile, we believe that may have immediate clinical applications."

It is obviously a good new and I hope this is of great help to treat Alzheimer's. We have to keep waiting...