Drugs for erectile dysfunction, diabetes could treat vascular dementia

A drug in the same realm as Viagra could treat and perhaps even prevent certain kinds of dementia. Powerful drugs used as a vascular therapy for diabetic patients also may be put to the task, officials from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) and the Alzheimer’s Society UK announced yesterday.

On the hunt for a viable treatment for dementia, researchers have made a curious hypothesis that Tadalafil, a blood vessel dilator commonly prescribed for erectile dysfunction, could aid in the treatment and prevention of vascular dementias caused by damaged small blood vessels and therefore diminished blood supply to the brain.

This mode of researching and repurposing approved drugs could speed up the process of bringing a viable Alzheimer’s therapy to market.

"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,” said Doug Brown, director of research and development at the Alzheimer's Society, in an official statement. “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. "

Atticus Hainsworth, PhD, a cellular neuroscientist at St. George's University of London is receiving $500,000 in research funding to test the hypothesis. If validated, it could mean a major step forward for dementia diagnostics and neuroimaging. According to the report, 50 to 70 percent of elderly people over the age of 80 develop mixed dementia—both vascular neurodegenerative disease and Alzheimer’s.

Christian Holscher, PhD, a neuroscientist at Lancaster University will be receiving an additional $250,000 in research funding for a study evaluating investigative drugs for diabetic patients to see if they can ease plaque deposition and associated memory loss. Another study assessing liraglutide, just such a drug, was shown to ameliorate these hallmark symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

The ADDF and Alzheimer’s Society are continuing with a clinical trial testing liraglutide on patients with early stage Alzheimer’s disease at the Imperial College London.