Search For Alzheimer's Cure Leads Researchers To Colombia
The search for a cure for Alzheimer's affliction has taken researchers to a remote percentage inwards the Colombian Highlands.
Ophelia (ph) has Alzheimer's.
She's alone 51, but the affliction has already taken her memories.Baca Juga
Now she's losing the things she learned every bit a child, how to talk, how to write her name. Her symptoms are the same every bit for millions of Alzheimer's sufferers simply about the world.
But Ophelia's affliction is rattling different. She was e'er going to acquire it. She carries a mutated cistron passed downwards from her mother, a roughshod inheritance of early onslaught Alzheimer's that's been inwards the household unit of measurement for generations.
If you lot don't run across the video go here.
| Subscribe to the |
Transcript
JEFFREY BROWN: And finally tonight, a medical mystery of our ain time, where the search for a cure for Alzheimer's affliction has taken researchers to a remote percentage inwards Colombia.
Tom Clarke of Independent Television News has the story.
Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 warning: Some of the medical footage is a fleck on the graphic side.
TOM CLARKE: Antioquia, Colombia's isolated northern highlands.
I'm alongside Lucia Madrigal (ph), a nurse on her rounds from the regional medical school. Until recently, many of Lucia's patients were alone accessible past times Equus caballus or on foot. Once, she was detained for a calendar week past times drug traffickers, who nonetheless command much of this area. Now the roads receive got opened up, Lucia is closer to her patients, a grouping who lived for centuries inwards the shadow of a dreadful illness to a greater extent than prevalent hither than anyone else on Earth.
Ophelia (ph) has Alzheimer's. She's alone 51, but the affliction has already taken her memories. Now she's losing the things she learned every bit a child, how to talk, how to write her name. Her symptoms are the same every bit for millions of Alzheimer's sufferers simply about the world. But Ophelia's affliction is rattling different. She was e'er going to acquire it. She carries a mutated cistron passed downwards from her mother, a roughshod inheritance of early onslaught Alzheimer's that's been inwards the household unit of measurement for generations.
Since their woman parent died, her older sis Aura (ph) has run this household. She tells me that, of sixteen brothers together with sisters, 8 inherited the disease. Four receive got died thus far. Ophelia together with her blood brother Gustavo (ph) at nowadays demand full-time care.
WOMAN (through translator): Well, for me, it's rattling hard, because you lot think, for who is it to a greater extent than difficult, for oneself or the sick ones? Maybe nosotros tin state that they don't experience anything. But the truth is you lot don't know what they feel.
TOM CLARKE: In together with simply about their town of Don Matias, they are non the alone household unit of measurement suffering. As many every bit 5,000 people inwards Antioquia deport the mutation. Each of their children stand upwardly a 50 per centum direct chances of inheriting the gene. Usually the affliction strikes at simply 49 years of age.
Here, the elderly sentinel the immature driblet dead of Alzheimer's. It's idea a unmarried Basque settler brought the affliction hither inwards the 18th century. His immediately descendants deport what's called the Paisa mutation, a nickname given to Colombians from these hills.
The remoteness of these northern Colombian towns together with villages is the argue the Paisa mutation has survived, passed on from generation to generation of the large families alongside lilliputian contact alongside the outside. But later nearly 300 years of isolated suffering, these families' plight has come upwardly to attending of the wider public because the mutation they deport could grip the cardinal to preventing Alzheimer's inwards millions of sufferers simply about the world.
Francisco Lopera is the Colombian neurologist who discovered the mutation. For 25 years, he's worked to gain the trust together with back upwardly of families. Now he together with they are at the centre of a major international scientific campaign.
DR. FRANCISCO LOPERA, University of Antioquia (through translator): Here, nosotros receive got the severe work of having the world's largest grouping of people alongside inherited Alzheimer's. The people are engaged alongside it, together with families know that if they acquire involved inwards affliction enquiry here, they are contributing globally. They non alone create it inwards club to detect a solution for their problem, but also to assist others.
TOM CLARKE: We traveled alongside MD Lopera dorsum to Don Matias. With him is the human being who coordinates Alzheimer's enquiry at Harvard University. Adrian Ivinson has come upwardly to sentinel his colleague's routine evaluation of Ophelia together with Gustavo, but also assess the potential these families receive got for a radically novel approach to curing Alzheimer's.
ADRIAN IVINSON, Harvard University: Do you lot notice a divergence inwards her?
DR. FRANCISCO LOPERA: Now, in conclusion time, she was talking better. Now she has lost many lines.
TOM CLARKE: They're the centre of attending because efforts to process Alzheimer's worldwide are failing. There is no predictive exam for the mutual cast of the disease, thus drugs are alone given 1 time symptoms are apparent. By then, harm to the encephalon may live irreversible.
But hither inwards Colombia, a unproblematic genetic exam reveals precisely which household unit of measurement members volition prepare the disease, decades before it strikes.
ADRIAN IVINSON: This gives us an incredible window of chance to expression at the rattling earliest stages of this disorder. That gives us the chance to create 2 things. First of all, it gives us an chance to expression at the affliction procedure good before it's thus bad that it causes symptoms. It also gives us the chance to attempt whatsoever hereafter medications, whatsoever hereafter drugs inwards a somebody whose encephalon is non thus badly damaged.
TOM CLARKE: And dorsum inwards the regional capital, Medellin, MD Lopera together with his academy colleagues are already on the case. They're non testing a novel drug, but an existing one. With the back upwardly of 2 other U.S. institutions, they receive got recruited 300 household unit of measurement members inwards the rootage clinical trial aimed at preventing Alzheimer's.
Participants receive got given a blood sample together with been tested for the mutation, but similar all the families beingness studied, they receive got agreed non to know the results. As early every bit adjacent year, researchers volition attempt using an existing Alzheimer's drug together with assess whether, given much earlier, it tin successfully foreclose or delay the disease.
DR. FRANCISCO LOPERA (through translator): It is belike that 5 years is also early for us to expression a cure for the disease, but that is the promise that nosotros have.
TOM CLARKE: One matter that raises that hope, state other Alzheimer's experts, is the human relationship hither betwixt the scientists together with their enquiry subjects.
And these cabinets grip the most striking demonstration of that alliance. Within are stored to a greater extent than than 50 brains donated past times families whose loved ones died because of the mutation. It's the world's largest collection of brains from people alongside inherited Alzheimer's.
It may live unsettling, but a encephalon bank, every bit it's known, is essential inwards providing clues most how Alzheimer's begins to destroy the encephalon together with how hereafter drugs mightiness go to halt it. But exterior the lab, dorsum inwards the homes of families similar Ophelia, the specter of inherited Alzheimer's remains every bit terrifying every bit it e'er has been. And scientific discipline can't motion quick plenty to allay the fears of those who may already deport the mutation.
WOMAN (through translator): What are the chances that, inwards the future, or how long volition it live before nosotros receive got cure?
ADRIAN IVINSON: This is the enquiry I'm asked most, to a greater extent than than whatsoever other question. And I would similar to live able to tell you lot how long it volition take, but nosotros can't.
TOM CLARKE: In all likelihood, a cure is nonetheless a long agency off. But the contribution these families receive got already made could Pb to novel advances inwards Alzheimer's. Anything that delays the progression of the disease, fifty-fifty for simply a few years, volition assist hereafter generations here, every bit good the 1 inwards 10 of us that volition prepare Alzheimer's when nosotros acquire old.
More Insight together with Advice for Caregivers
- How Alzheimer's Destroys the Brain -- Video
- Test Your Memory for Alzheimer's (5 Best Self Assessment Tests)
- What is Alzheimer's Disease?
- What is Dementia?
- What’s the Difference Between Alzheimer’s Disease together with Dementia
- Communicating inwards Alzheimer's World
- How the Loss of Memory Works inwards Alzheimer’s Disease, together with How Understanding This Could Help You
- Learning How to Communicate alongside Someone Suffering From Alzheimer's Disease
- Alzheimer's World -- Trying to Reconnect alongside Someone Suffering from Alzheimer's Disease
- Does the Combination of Aricept together with Namenda Help Slow the Rate of Decline inwards Alzheimer's Patients
- About the
Original content Bob DeMarco, the