As the 6th leading cause of death in the United States, Alzheimer’s disease has become a revolutionizing, yet query disease. Although there are many challenging questions and uneasy answers, there is still hope in the battle against the disease. Scientists are only a step away from achieving control of the disease.
When the 80’s AIDS epidemic hit, researchers and citizens were almost certain that this was the end of the times. However, three decades later, the HIV disease (the step before AIDS) is now under control allowing individuals with the disease to take control of their lives with revolutionizing healthcare and medication. This optimism leads to scientists believing they are only steps away from getting Alzheimer’s to the same proximity. Although it will still take a long time to come up for a cure for the disease, scientists still believe they will be able to get it under control with various lifestyle changes and medication within the next decade. The problem is that there is still an unknown factor as to what exactly causes Alzheimer’s. According to Professor Bart De Strooper, the first step into getting the disease under control is to understand the underlying causes; therefore, the priority is still research. However, the optimism level has increased greatly now more than ever.
As researchers continue to gather evidence and try to understand the disease, others are working backwards into finding a cure first, in order to understand the underlying factors. Scientists have been testing breakthrough cures on mice to find that exposure to a certain amount of light frequency has corrected damaged signals in the brain. After the mice were exposed to the light, the immune cells became stronger, working through amyloid plaque. Because of this, the FDA has already been approached to begin clinical trials in order to the take the step to finding out the causes of Alzheimer’s. This comes as especially great news due to the fact that the success rate for Alzheimer’s drugs is very low.
Recently, the drug Solanezumab had been in its final stages of testing, when researchers were disappointed to find out that it did not slow down memory loss.The drug was to target these amyloid plaque proteins, which are responsible for the disease. However with the disappointment comes some anticipation as there are still other drugs on the market, such as Aducanumab and Nilvadipine, to be tested.
As there are various teams studying the hidden factors of the disease and others demanding to find the cure, there is only high hope that the disease is just a few steps away from being defeated through modern science and technology.