1,721,112 research outputs found
Is immunotherapy an effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease?
No full textAbstract Immunotherapy in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) is rapidly becoming a hot topic of modern geriatric and clinical gerontology. Current views see immunization with Aβ peptide, the amyloidogenic protein found in senile plaque of AD patient's brains, or the infusion of preformed antibody specific for human Aβ, as possible therapeutic approaches to improve the cognitive status in the disease. Animal models of the disease have provided positive results from both approaches. Thus, an initial clinical trial using immunization with human Aβ in AD patients was started, but then shortly halted because of an unusually high incidence (6%) of meningoencephalitis. A long and currently ongoing debate in the scientific community about the pro or contra of vaccination or passive immunization with Aβ in AD is thereafter started. Here, the authors would like to stress few points of concern regarding these approaches in clinical practice.</p
Predictive diagnostics and personalized medicine for the prevention of chronic degenerative diseases
Full text linkAbstract Progressive increase of mean age and life expectancy in both industrialized and emerging societies parallels an increment of chronic degenerative diseases (CDD) such as cancer, cardiovascular, autoimmune or neurodegenerative diseases among the elderly. CDD are of complex diagnosis, difficult to treat and absorbing an increasing proportion in the health care budgets worldwide. However, recent development in modern medicine especially in genetics, proteomics, and informatics is leading to the discovery of biomarkers associated with different CDD that can be used as indicator of disease’s risk in healthy subjects. Therefore, predictive medicine is merging and medical doctors may for the first time anticipate the deleterious effect of CDD and use markers to identify persons with high risk of developing a given CDD before the clinical manifestation of the diseases. This innovative approach may offer substantial advantages, since the promise of personalized medicine is to preserve individual health in people with high risk by starting early treatment or prevention protocols. The pathway is now open, however the road to an effective personalized medicine is still long, several (diagnostic) predictive instruments for different CDD are under development, some ethical issues have to be solved. Operative proposals for the heath care systems are now needed to verify potential benefits of predictive medicine in the clinical practice. In fact, predictive diagnostics, personalized medicine and personalized therapy have the potential of changing classical approaches of modern medicine to CDD.</p
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