A Russian-made drug, which was formulated to combat hay fever, now shows it helps improve cognitive abilities in patients with Alzheimer's disease, according to the results of a year-long trial published on Thursday.
This drug is known as Dimebon and was first discovered in 1983, sold in Russia as an antihistamine, but was dropped when better treatments came on the market.
In this neurodegenerative disease, brain cells are killed by a build up of toxic plaques and tangled proteins, leading to forgetfulness, mood swings, dementia and death.
The team enrolled 155 patients at 11 sites in Russia, who were given a dose of Dimebon three times a day or a harmless lookalike pill called a placebo.
They were assessed according to a scale to measure cognitive abilities and memory.
After the six months on this regime, the patients were assessed again. After that, 134 of them took part in a 26-week extension, and were assessed once more.
At both phases of the experiment, the Dimebon group "significantly improved" compared to the start of the experiment, while the placebo group showed clear deterioration, the researchers say.
This is huge and I sure hope the results continue to be positive ones. It's so tough for me to get excited about a synthetic drug like this but I really see so much more good than bad in this case.
