Alzheimer drug study approved

Press, 28 July 1987, Page 11

Alzheimer drug study approved

NZPA-AP i Washington

A Senate panel has approved a three-year, SUSI2 million ($20.16 million) study of a new drug scientists say could be the first effective treatment for Alzheimers disease. Senator Claiborne Pell said he advocated the measure to speed up research on the experimental drug, which created a stir last November when a Californian researcher published promising test results. Dr William Summers, who reported positive results in 16 of 17 people treated with the pills, has said drug manufacturers were reluctant to research the experimental drug because they could not get a patent. A patent cannot be issued on the drug, tetrahydroaminoacrine, or THA, because the substance was discovered in 1909 and is no longer patentable.

Dr Summers emphasised that the drug does not cure Alzheimers disease or stop its progression. It eases the symptoms of the disease in the same way insulin controls diabetes.

Under Senator Pell’s legislation, the Federal Government would pay SUS2 million ($3.36

million) annually for three years and private researchers would pay the same for the research. “This is a trivial sum when weighed against the suffering," said Senator Pell, who attached the measure to the older Americans Act The bill was passed unanimously by the Senate Labour and Human Resources Committee and sent to the full senate.

Warner Lambert Companyy already plans to spend SUS2.S million ($4.2 million) to SUS 3 million ($5.04 million) on a study in conjunction with the National Institute of Ageing and a consortium of treatment centres, according to Warner Lambert spokesman, Mr Marshall Molloy. The money from Senator Pell’s legislation would help fund that proposed study, his aides said.

An estimated 1.5 million to 3 million Americans suffer from Alzheimers disease, which is the main cause of senility among elderly Americans and causes more than 100,000 deaths annually.

Senator Pell said the number of people afflicted with Alzheimers disease and related dementia was expected to increase 60 per cent before the end of the decade.