Fish oil, caffeine may thwart Alzheimer's

Blood pressure drugs made by GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Roche Holding AG, caffeine and fish oil all may help treat, prevent or delay Alzheimer's disease, researchers found in separate studies.

The drugs, all available in generic form, appear to block formation of sticky wads of protein called amyloid plaques that build up in brains of Alzheimer's patients. Caffeine and fish oil were found to reduce the plaques in animals, scientists said at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego.

As people live longer and the number of Alzheimer's cases increases, drugmakers are investing billions of dollars to develop new treatments. If widely available medicines and substances such as fish oil and caffeine help, that could ease the suffering and prolong the independence of millions of elderly people, researchers said at the meeting.

"If you delay Alzheimer's by only five years without increasing life span, you could cut the number of cases in half," said Eric Reiman, director of the Banner Alzheimer's Institute in Phoenix, in an interview at the conference. "And it's possible you could do even better than that." Reiman was not involved in the research.

About 5.1 million Americans have Alzheimer's, which damages memory and mental abilities. That may rise to between 11 million and 16 million by 2050, says the Chicago-based Alzheimer's Association, a research and advocacy group. Now, someone develops Alzheimer's every 72 seconds; by mid-century, it will be every 33 seconds, the association estimates.

Drugs that lower blood pressure have been tested as possible treatments for Alzheimer's before with conflicting results. To settle the question, researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York screened 55 blood pressure drugs.

The scientists, led by Giulio Pasinetti, extracted amyloid proteins from mice that are genetically engineered to have a form of Alzheimer's and mixed them with the drugs. Seven of the medications caused a reduction of the amyloid proteins in the test tube and three of those, given to living mice with Alzheimer's, cut the number of plaques in their brains.

The three medications include Coreg, now sold in generic form as carvedilol, and the Roche drugs, sold generically as propranolol and nicardipine. These medicines cut the plaque when used in doses far lower than those prescribed to reduce blood pressure. That may mean they won't cause unwanted lowering of blood pressure, Pasinetti said at the conference.