Showing posts with label memantine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memantine. Show all posts

Thursday, January 23, 2014

White Noise: Trials of Pharmaceuticals for Alzheimer's Disease

"But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it." - Charles Darwin

In yesterday's NEJM, the results of two trials of antiamyloid monoclonal antibodies (sonalezumab and bapeneuzumab)  for Alzheimer's Disease (AD) are published.  I became interested in the evidence for AD treatments after the recent trial of Vitamin E and Mematine for AD (the TEAM-AD VA Cooperative Trial) was published in JAMA earlier this month.  Regular readers know that I think that the prior probability that vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants are beneficial for any disease outside of deficiency states is very low.  The vitamin E trial was the impetus for some background investigation which I will summarize below.