New research suggests Alzheimer’s disease could be treated with a drug we’ve been using for decades.
Researchers have found that a drug used to induce labor in pregnant women also speeds up the system that removes waste products from the brain, which is malfunctioning in these women.
This is why some people refer to Alzheimer’s and other dementias as “dirty brain” diseases. When the waste disposal system slows down, toxic waste accumulates in the brain, crowding out and damaging healthy tissue.
Using drugs that trigger muscle contractions may restore some of these functions, said Dr. Douglas Kelley, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Rochester who led the study.
This type of medication, used to achieve over a million pregnancies each year, can be taken as a tablet, intravenously or for topical use for $561.
Research conducted at the University of Rochester by Dr. Douglas Kelley (left) and colleagues such as Professor Tin Du (right) found that a common drug could help restore the functions of the glymphatic system in older brains
The researchers studied the brain’s waste removal system, known as the glymphatic system, which begins to slow down with age and in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
‘“These research findings demonstrate that restoring cervical lymphatic function can significantly halt the age-related slowing of waste removal from the brain,” said Dr. Kelley.
‘Furthermore, this was achieved with a drug that is already in clinical use and offers a potential treatment strategy.’
The study, published in the journal Nature Aging, examined the complex A series of tunnels and pumps that the brain uses to eliminate waste products is called the glymphatic system.
The system pumps fluid over the brain tissue, flushing away and pumping out old cells and proteins that could clog and damage neurons.
In a young and healthy brain, this system works well and efficiently. However, it weakens with age or dementia.
One theory of Alzheimer’s disease is that this slowing allows the formation of proteins called beta-amyloid.
Beta-amyloid is a naturally occurring protein that is broken down in the young brain when it is no longer useful and sent to the body for further processing.
But in Alzheimer’s disease, bundles of these dysfunctional proteins can accumulate – a hallmark of the disease – and crowd out and destroy healthy brain tissue.
A similar process occurs in Parkinson’s disease with another protein called alpha-synuclein.
Dr. Kelley was able to observe how the brain’s waste system slows down with age in mice by tagging the pumps in their brains and recording their work.
He found that in young, healthy mice, these pumps worked quickly, delivering a nearly constant stream of dirty fluid from the brain.
In older mice, however, contractions slowed by about 63 percent, allowing more “dirt” to accumulate in the brain.
The observation of this delayed pump function led researchers to think about a type of drug that has been used for years, called prostanoids.
Prostaglandins are medicines that affect prostaglandins, a type of fat that the body naturally produces and that causes, among other things, muscle contractions.
These medications are useful in a variety of medical situations, from assisting muscle contractions during labor to treating glaucoma to altering blood flow.
They were used to deliver about 31 percent of all American babies in 2020 – bringing 1,117,612 new people into the world for about $561 per dose.
The best known of these is misoprostol, one of two drugs used in medical abortion.
The researchers administered a type of topical prostanoid drug to the mice’s neck, just above the pumps that process the brain’s waste products. The theory was that this might cause the muscles in the pumps to kick back in.
The drug accelerated the pumping performance of the older mice so that they could remove old fluid from the brain just as efficiently as the young, healthy mice.
“One can see how this approach, perhaps in combination with other interventions, could form the basis for future therapies for these diseases,” said Dr. Kelley.
