Why a Drug Treatment for Dementia Eludes Researchers

An effective treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease continues to elude medicine. So does a cure. The condition of neurodegenerative diseases are hard to accurately diagnose. Creating medications that target the brain effectively is even more difficult since the human body has filters and other biological blocks on the the blood that circulates through the brain.

But the need is real. More than forty-five million people worldwide are dealing with dementia. Healthcare groups around the globe are keenly interested in addressing the medical need of dementia patients. After all, any one of us might be next. But dementia and other cognitive disorders have a wide array of causes. The term itself, dementia, isn’t a specific diagnosis but a sort of broad term that encompasses a number of underlying conditions that all describe some level of brain deterioration.

In all cases, treatment is complicated by a lack of clear understanding of the biological causes of the cognitive declines. Alzheimer’s Disease, for example, is thought to be linked to certain amyloid plaques that appear on the brain. But why that is, and how they specifically lead to full blown Alzheimer’s, is not yet understood. And, as mentioned above, the body’s blood-brain barrier is a significant obstacles for treating any causes that are identified. Even when medicine can locate something to target that might help patients, getting treatment into the brain is harder than in the rest of the body.