St George’s University. UK: Scientists are to explore whether drugs usually used to treat erectile
problems by expanding blood vessels could become the next major way to
tackle the dementia epidemic. Experts led by Dr Atticus Hainsworth at St
George’s, University of London, will explore whether tadalafil, which is
a drug in the same class as Viagra, could help prevent vascular
dementia by increasing blood flow to the brain.
Vascular dementia is the second most common form of dementia and accounts for around 110,000 cases of dementia in the UK.
Vascular dementia is often caused by damage to
the small blood vessels of the brain leading to reduced blood flow to
brain tissue. This blood vessel damage- known as small vessel disease-
is seen in the brains of 50-70% of elderly people. The researchers hope
that tadalafil’s blood-flow boosting properties can prevent the damage
that leads to vascular dementia.
A major trans-Atlantic research partnership is to
be launched to investigate this potential treatment, funded by the
Alzheimer’s Society and the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation.
Dr Atticus Hainsworth, the lead researcher, said:
“The drug tadalafil is widely used to increase blood flow in penile
tissue. Now we’re asking whether it can do the same for another vital
organ, the brain.
“As there are very few drugs for the management
of dementia, we want to know whether a well-known, well-tolerated drug
can be used to help patients with this particular type of dementia.
“My colleagues and I are very enthusiastic about this trans-Atlantic initiative.”
This new charity partnership is announced a year
after the first G8 summit on dementia called for increased investment
and global collaboration in dementia research in order to find a
disease-modifying treatment by 2025. The research is part of a number of
projects which have been announced by the Alzheimer’s Society.
Dr Doug Brown, Director of Research and
Development at Alzheimer’s Society said: “Drug development can take
decades and sadly, the path towards developing dementia treatments over
the past decade is littered with drugs that have failed in clinical
trials. As we learn more about the causes of dementia and its links to
other conditions, there is hope that treatments we routinely use for
other diseases may also work for people with dementia.
“These incredibly exciting studies could see
existing treatments turned into drugs for the most common forms of
dementia in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of
developing new drugs from scratch. By next year 850,000 people in the UK
will have dementia and we owe it to them to do everything we can to
develop better treatments and ultimately a cure. Research like this is a
huge part of that goal.”