Key points from article :
Two common psychiatric drugs improved symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, including boosting cognition.
APOE4 is encoded by a gene variant that when inherited, confers the strongest risk for developing late-onset Alzheimer’s.
Screened 595 compounds and identified several compounds that blocked the effect of APOE4.
Psychiatric patients with AD using imipramine and olanzapine showed significant improvement in AD symptoms.
“These drugs block the catalytic effect of APOE4 on the formation of amyloids in the brain,” - Huntington Potter, senior author.
Subjects taking imipramine or olanzapine had improved cognition and diagnoses - direct measures of disease severity.
“...reverted from Alzheimer’s disease to mild cognitive impairment or from mild cognitive impairment to normal.”
Next step would be to test imipramine on a rodent model and, if successful, conduct a clinical trial.
“Drugs that have benefit AD patients are maybe one or two or three,” Potter said. “So this is a very promising advance.”
Study by the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus published in Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy.
