J Alzheimer dis: can lithium prevent the progression of Alzheimer's disease?

January 28, 2020 / Biovalley BIOON / -- in a new study, Dr Claudio Cuello and others from the Department of pharmacology and therapeutics of McGill University showed that providing patients with low-dose lithium can not only effectively alleviate the late symptoms of Alzheimer's disease (such as amyloid plaque formation), but also restore the lost cognitive ability The results were published in the latest issue of Journal of Alzheimer's disease In the early study, the author detected the conventional dosage of lithium preparation (the dosage used to treat emotional disorders in clinical) in the rat model, and found that it led to many adverse reactions in rats Subsequently, the author used a new lithium preparation and applied it to the transgenic model of Alzheimer's disease rats, and finally got a positive result Inspired by these early results, researchers set out to study the effect of the drug on the advanced stage of Alzheimer's disease The study found that when amyloid plaques already existed in the brain and cognitive ability began to decline, the preparation could achieve the beneficial results of reducing pathological severity and improving cognition "Our findings show that the trace lithium element we use can enter the brain through the brain blood barrier, and at the same time reduce the lithium content in the blood to the minimum, so as to protect individuals from adverse effects Although there is no drug that can recover the irreversible brain damage for the clinical treatment of Alzheimer's disease, the preparation of trace lithium is likely to produce significant beneficial effects in the early stage of the disease or in the preclinical stage " Se lithium Formulation, Blunts Early Amyloid Post-Plaque Neuropathology in McGill-R-Thy1-app Alzheimer-Like Transgenic Rats Journal of Alzheimer's Disease , 2020; 73 (2): 723 DOI: 10.3233/JAD-190862