Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment

My college classmate, Roy, sent me this article on "hyperbaric oxygen therapy" (HBOT) for Alzheimer's disease.  I could have sworn that I had written about this before, but I can't find it in the blog archives.  I do recall having investigated it and found that the treatment is offered here in my own small city, and some claim their treatment will treat Alzheimer's disease.  But I also recall being a bit squeamish about the caliber of the clinics offering it.  I'm thinking I was going to ask my neurologist about it and then totally forgot about the whole thing.  Or maybe I did, and she didn't like the idea.  But I don't remember at all.  (I'll have another opportunity to bring it up with her in early May.)

HBOT is, however a recognized treatment for a number of ailments, including:

• Severe anemia
• Brain abscess
• Bubbles of air in your blood vessels (arterial gas embolism)
• Burns
• Carbon monoxide poisoning
• Crushing injury
• Deafness, sudden
• Decompression sickness
• Gangrene
• Infection of skin or bone that causes tissue death
• Nonhealing wounds, such as a diabetic foot ulcer
• Radiation injury
• Skin graft or skin flap at risk of tissue death
• Traumatic brain injury
• Vision loss, sudden and painless

 So far, it's just not formally approved for Alzheimer's disease.

What is HBOT, and why might it be helpful?

An HBOT treatment consists of having the patient breathe pure oxygen in a chamber pressurized to two atmospheres. (If you're a scuba diver like I was many years ago, that's like going to a depth of 33 feet.)  For the Israeli study cited in the article, they first treated mice to find that their memory and cognition improved after treatment.  This had been done before.  But they also took six elderly patients with significant memory loss and exposed them to 60 treatments over three months.  The treatments consisted of 90 minute sessions, with five minute breaks every 20 minutes.

So how did that go?  First, the researchers detected a definite increase in delivery of oxygen to the brain.  They also found that the treatments led to a decrease in the presence of amyloid plaques, where the number  of amyloid plaques were increasing in the control patients.

Great.  Aduhelm reduces amyloid plaques.  But what happened with memory and cognition?  At the outset of the study, the patients actually scored a little better than the general population in cognition, but much worse on memory.  After the treatments, the patients showed some improvement in cognition, but much their scores were much better -- near normal -- for memory.  Very good.

The researchers believed that HBOT caused structural changes in blood vessels. This increased cerebral blood flow, reducing brain hypoxia and improving cognitive performance. They further believe it holds promise for the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease because it not only addresses the symptoms but also targets the core pathology and biology responsible for the advancement of Alzheimer’s disease. 

I will be very interested in hearing what my neurologist has to say about this.