Tag: Alzheimer's disease

Rounding at Iowa: New Treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease

This is one of the latest Rounding@Iowa podcasts and it’s about new treatments for Azheimer’s Disease, with one specific agent called Lecanemab.

I’m an old psychiatrist, and I remember my clinical impresson of the previous medications for Alzheimer’s Disease, one of which was Donepezil. The scientific literature seemed to suggest that patients and families were more impressed with Donepezil than clinicians were.

According to Dr. Shim, one of the participants in the podcast, it’s been 20 years since there has been a new treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease-and the long term effectiveness of Lecanemab is uncertain.

In addition, there are significant risks associated with the agent as well. As you can guess, it’s very expensive, and while Medicare pays for some of the cost, the podcast participants mentioned that it was difficult to get some treatment monitoring imaging studies covered.

Patients and their physicians need to have a full discussion of the risks and benefits of treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s just as important to avoid the use of certain drugs that are known to worsen cognitive function, such as benzodiazepines and anticholinergics.

Exercise for Brain Health

University of Iowa research shows that exercise could help for protecting us against Alzheimer’s disease. After age 65, our risk for this category of dementia doubles every 5 years.

Even if scientists develop effective and safe senolytic compounds that could allow us to live to be 200 years old, that won’t be happening in the near future. There’s another way to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Exercise can lower the risk for Alzheimer’s disease, especially some form of aerobic exercise.

When it comes to exercise, any exercise is better than none.