Is 'Sound' the Key to Curing Alzheimers?

How could sound, which is pretty much just variations in air pressure, potentially cure this infamous disease, that 1 in 6 people over the age of 80 are at high risk of getting?

Alzheimer's is a type of dementia (brain disorder that affects function) and is the most common form of it. A few symptoms include:

1. Memory loss
2. Difficulty performing familiar tasks
3. Deteriorating situational judgement
4. Behavioural changes

Dementia research is desperately underfunded. For every person living with dementia, the annual cost to the UK economy is over £30,000 and yet only £90 is spent on dementia research each year.

At the time of writing this piece, there is no cure for Alzheimer's, categorising it as a "terminal illness."

From the image above, the yellowish clumps between nerve cells are amyloid plaques made of beta-amyloids, these destroy connections between nerve cells which aggravate the effect on thinking, memory and behaviour. Potentially, if there were a way to safely destroy these, perhaps the effect of Alzheimers can be removed/reversed, as then neuroregeneration can perhaps take place. 

See, in the brain there is something called a blood-brain barrier. It is a partially-permeable membrane that restricts what can and cannot reach the brain i.e. it stops toxins from reaching the brain. But it also restricts useful substances e.g. drugs to destroy the protein plaques. New research and clinical trials have taken place within the last few months, which have used low-frequency (ultrasound <20Hz) sound waves as a potential branching point in the development towards a proper cure.

The sound waves were shown to open up this blood-brain barrier in Alzheimer patients. The preliminary data from the trial, funded by the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, showed that using ultrasound technology to deliver Alzheimer’s-destroying drugs could be a real possibility in the future. Perhaps external drugs may not even be needed, once the blood-brain barrier has been opened, the body may realise that the amyloid plaques are harmful and form a way to clear it naturally.

Dr N Lipsman, a leading researcher and clinician conducting the tests, and in an interview asking how he had managed to open up the blood-brain barrier, he said:
"It’s essentially non-invasive. The procedure involves patients coming into the hospital. A frame is attached directly to their head with two pins in the front and two pins in the back. Then their head is placed inside a helmet. The lining of the helmet contains over 1,000 individual ultrasound transducer elements, or 1,000 sources of ultrasound. With their head in the helmet, they go into an MRI scanner. Then, we use high-resolution imaging to look at their brain and select which region of the brain to open the blood-brain barrier. But it’s not enough to just apply ultrasound. We need to inject patients with a special contrast agent that contains microbubbles. These microbubbles are small and contain gas. They circulate throughout the body, then get to the brain. When these microbubbles are exposed to ultrasound, they vibrate, increasing and decreasing rapidly in size. That vibration pulls apart the cells making up the blood-brain barrier, and it does so temporarily for about six hours. So there’s a six-hour window of opportunity to deliver whatever’s in the bloodstream into the brain."

Potential drugs and medications that have already been synthesized and are being tested which can destroy the plaques are:

1. Aducanumab - a monoclonal antibody targeting the plaques
2. JNJ-54861911 - inhibits the enzyme "beta-secretase" which makes the beta-amyloids
3. AADvac1 - a vaccine that stimulates the body to attack proteins which destabilise the neuron structure 
4. Sargramostim - stimulates the immune system to activate processes to protect neurons in the brain from toxic proteins

In my opinion, this procedure definitely has potential, but it has only been through one round of clinical trials, so much more funding and investigation is necessary before this form of treatment is released into the public, which could realistically take another 10 years. By then, will there be new information or technology which opens up more pathways into how to approach and tackle dementia?

For the full interview with Dr N Lipsman, please click this link.