"To me, that's the worst disease known to man-- including cancer and heart problems," he said. "You're robbing someone of their entire life... their entire memory from when they were a child to an adult."
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The Icara Study
Study gives Alzheimer's patients hope
"Some days you're not as sharp as other days, and that scares me," Ann added.
Ann is part of an Alzheimer's study at St. Petersburg's Meridien Research .
She's in the beginning stages. Meridien introduces George as her caregiver.
"No, I'm her roommate," he said. "I hate caregiver means that you've gone past the last stage that you're right there at the end. I'm her roommate and we hang out together and do things together and if I can help her by giving her a pill fine."
Ann is trying a new medicine, a strong antihistamine not legalized in the United States. In Russia, it has shown signs of improving memory function.
So she's giving it a try to avoid what she fears most. "Not being able to do things, not be able to care for myself all those awful things that happen to you," she said.
"We are in the dark ages of brain research," said Dr. Mildred Farmer, a lead researcher at Meridien who's spent 20 years studying Alzheimer's.
Despite how far medical advances have come researching disease, she said Alzheimer's continues to elude doctors and scientists.
"The reality is that there was a lot of data but not a lot of information," Dr. Farmer said. "We know a lot of pieces of the puzzle but the puzzle is not entirely put together yet."
At Meridien, they are working to find a cure, with patients like Ann to preserve memory function and perhaps more groundbreaking— focusing on a new treatment for more advanced patients. It centers on the presence of plaques of ameloid that build on the brain, and an investigational drug that scrubs the brain.
It's taken 15 years to get to human trials on patients with Alzheimer's, but they are there. Current therapies treat only the symptoms of the disease. This would target the disease itself.
"We'll know the answer in a year or so, so we're right on the cusp of determining whether the ameloid theory is going to work," Dr. Farmer said.
She said everyday they are pioneering, looking for answers to this riddle locked deep in the brain.
"By removing ameloid or preventing it from settling in the brain we may we're hoping we may be able to change the course of the disease," she said.
And if they can do that, they can change the course of life for Alzheimer's patients like Ann and those who love them like George.
So they can get on with living and not have to worry about being robbed of the years they worked so hard to enjoy.
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Bob DeMarco is the Founder of the Alzheimer's Reading Room and an Alzheimer's caregiver. The ARR knowledge base contains more than 3,811 articles with more than 312,100 links on the Internet. Bob lives in Delray Beach, FL.
Original content Bob DeMarco, the Alzheimer's Reading Room