New drug trials are offering a new take on slowing Alzheimer’s.
Marilyn Maldonado is not quite sure why she is at the Memory Enhancement Center in the seaside town of Oakhurst, N.J.
“What are we waiting for?” she asks. About 10 minutes later, she asks again. Then she asks again.
She is waiting to enter a new type of Alzheimer’s drug study that will, in the boldest effort yet, test the leading hypothesis about how to slow or stop this terrifying brain disease.
The disease is defined by freckles of barnacle-like piles of a protein fragment, amyloid beta, in the brain. So, the current thinking goes, if you block amyloid formation or get rid of amyloid accumulations — plaque — and if you start treatment before the disease is well under way, you might have a chance to alter its course.