Is the Search for an Alzheimer's Drug Intervetion Over?

In a post of March 25, "Aducanumab RIP," we discussed the shock waves that went through the AD community when Aducanumab was abandoned as a candidate drug intervention.  We noted that the failure of the drug had challenged our understanding of how the disease works.  Since then, consensus on how to go forward has continued to evolve.

This week, Alzheimer's and Dementia, the journal of the Alzheimer's Association published an article about the changing research paradigm.  The article, "Dementia: Paradigm Shifting into High Gear," acknowledges how the failure of the drug has shaken optimism about the future trajectory of AD research.  While I didn't pay the $36 necessary to penetrate the paywall and so didn't read it, I did read the abstract.  The article doesn't say it in so many words, but the implication could be that there just might not be a "silver bullet" drug intervention for AD, at least not in the foreseeable future.  The article suggests that continuing the search for a miracle drug may be misguided, and treatment ideas are complicated by the likely presence of cardiovascular disease in the Alzheimer's brain.  We should think about new designs and strategies that consider the concurrent presence of different diseases associated with aging.

What I take from this is that the only treatment that we have now or will likely have any time soon is the multi-domain strategy we discuss in Beating the Dementia Monster: physical exercise, sound diet, good sleep, maintaining social connection, and stress reduction.