By LAURAN NEERGAARD and SHELBY LUM
An experimental treatment appears to delay Alzheimer’s symptoms in some people genetically destined to get the disease in their 40s or 50s, according to new findings from ongoing research now caught up in Trump administration funding delays.
The early results — a scientific first — were published Wednesday even as study participants worried that politics could cut their access to a possible lifeline.
“It’s still a study but it has given me an extension to my life that I never banked on having,” said Jake Heinrichs of New York City.
Now 50, Heinrichs has been treated in that study for more than a decade and remains symptom-free despite inheriting an Alzheimer’s-causing gene that killed his father and brother around the same age.
If blocked funding stops Heinrichs’ doses, “how much time do we have?” asked his wife, Rachel Chavkin. “This trial is life.”
Two drugs sold in the U.S. can modestly slow worsening of early-stage Alzheimer’s by clearing the brain of one of its hallmarks, a sticky gunk called amyloid. But until now, there haven’t been hints that removing amyloid far earlier – many years before the first symptoms appear – just might postpone the disease.
The research led by Washington University in St. Louis involves families that pass down rare gene mutations almost guaranteeing they’ll develop symptoms at the same age their affected relatives did – information that helps scientists tell if treatments are having any effect.
The new findings center on a subset of 22 participants who received amyloid-removing drugs the longest, on average eight years. Long-term amyloid removal cut in half their risk of symptom onset, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Lancet Neurology.
Despite the study’s small size, “it’s incredibly important,” said Northwestern University neuroscientist David Gate, who wasn’t involved with the research.
Now participants have been switched from an earlier…
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