A New Drug on the Horizon?

Troriluzole.  I've never heard of it before.  But it just popped up on my radar as a new treatment candidate for Alzheimer's disease.  It's currently being investigated as a treatment for some forms of cerebellar ataxia (like mine?), obsessive-compulsive disorder, and some other neurological disorders.  It's a formulation of the existing drug riluzole that is used to treat ALS -- Lou Gehrig's disease.  The re-formulation is to increase its bioavailability.  

But suddenly, a study from Auburn University in Alabama, published in the Journal of Neurochemistry, indicates that it may treat underlying mechanisms in Alzheimer's disease ... in mice.  Mice again, but you have to start somewhere.  At least we already have a lot of experience with the riluzole from a safety standpoint.  And administration of the drug to genetically modified mice -- modified to produce a disease like Alzheimer's -- improved their memory and cognition.

It's probably a long way from the work with mice to an approved treatment.  But what's interesting about this investigation is that it may lead to better insight on how Alzheimer's actually works.  It's increasingly evident that removing amyloid plaques simply addresses symptoms, not the underlying disease.  But most of the drug strategies getting attention are about removing plaques.  And sometimes removing plaques doesn't even help.  So it may be that, not only do we get a new drug that will deal more directly with the underlying disease, but we will learn more about what the disease even is.  (Because we don't really know!)

Here's an article about the research.  But beyond what I've said here, the discussion gets pretty deep.

Whither the Acupuncture?

Back on August 10, we wrote that I had begun getting acupuncture treatments for my insomnia.  At the time, I had completed one treatment, and believed I had gotten some improvement.  Not that I didn't wake up in the middle of the night as in the past, but that first night my Fitbit recorded significant improvement in sleep quality.  So I thought it was worth continuing to see what would happen.  (Some of you suggested this was a placebo effect, and -- I don't know -- maybe you're right.)  The research I cited in my August 10 post used six treatments as a benchmark for evaluation.  I thought that was a good goal for me.

Except that I need to be good at counting to make sure I get all six...

As of last Friday, I thought I had completed the six treatment goal.  Aside from the initial boost in sleep quality, I didn't feel that my sleep had improved.  I still woke up in the middle of the night, and my sleep scores were back to being pretty bad.  So I said that last Friday's treatment would be my last.  Except that was only five treatments, not six.  (I don't count good.)

My pattern is to get to sleep relatively easily, but then wake up at 1 or 2 a.m.  When I wake up, I REALLY wake up, and in an unpleasant way.  It's painful even just to lie there.  So, I would get up and take care of a few things, but I had always been able to go back to bed and get back to seep after being up for one and a half hours.  This might yield six and a half hours of sleep.  Not ideal, but I can live on that.  But for the past few months, getting back to sleep has been nearly impossible.  I would feel unwell during the day, and I thought I could just nap after noon.  Aside from a schedule that didn't accommodate naps well, I usually couldn't even get to sleep for the nap.  If I could get to sleep, it would be only for 15 minutes or so -- not making up for what I lost the night before.

After cancelling my subsequent appointments, it occurred to me that, after starting the acupuncture, I have recently actually been getting back to sleep at about 4 a.m. and been sleeping OK after that.  Waking up last night was quite unpleasant, but I went back to bed after an hour and a half, and my Fitbit says I actually got seven hours with a (for me) good sleep quality score.  This is a more sustained improvement -- it's been a long time since I've seen that.  So maybe I was premature on cancelling my appointments, and I should reschedule.  Stay tuned.