Welcome, dear doctors! This week, we bring you four news pieces based on recent significant developments in the world of medicinal research. We had published these pieces earlier but in case you missed something, this short article will bring you to speed.

1. Will we ever have an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s?

The number of Alzheimer’s patients in America runs into millions and it impacts families as well. And the global burden of the disease is only set to grow as a million other people enter their old age. Keeping this information in mind, the fact that the Food and Drug Administration, USA has granted approval to a new drug for treating Alzheimer’s, sounds like great news. However, this new drug by Biogen and Japan’s Eisai Co. has not been received well by experts in the field of research. While they say that the said treatment doesn’t really work, the FDA says it has approved the drug based on study results which proved it is reasonably likely to show improvement in Alzheimer’s patients.

The medicine ‘Aducanumab’ will be renamed as ‘Aduhelm’ for the purpose and is said to help slow down mental decline. The U.S. regulators claim that ‘Aduhelm’ can reduce the clumps of plaque in the brain and therefore, is likely to treat the disease rather than help its symptoms. A follow-up study by the drug makers is still pending; now whether it will stand true to FDA’s claims or only raise more questions about its benefits, only time will tell!

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2. One solution for COVID-19 and Alzheimer’s, is it really possible?

Even before the claims by FDA get proven or challenged by the fraternity, we have one more company offering a plausible treatment for neurodegenerative diseases.

Vaxxinity, a biotech company in the USA, has developed a vaccine for COVID-19 and it claims that properties of the same can also work for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Their vaccine has been named UB-612 and is in phase 2 of conventional trials. Apart from using the recombinant protein, it also uses synthetic peptides that mimic the spike protein and other protein types for fighting the new Coronavirus.

The pharmaceutical company employs a technique that trains the human body to produce antibodies to combat internal targets of the disease. As per Mei Mei Hu, the CEO of the company, their modality for this vaccine also supports other programs that need the same technique. So, the Alzheimer’s drug promotes the cleaning of misfolded proteins in the brain called amyloid plaques – which is linked to the disease. The next step for the company is to conduct a larger study post phase 2 trials in the hope that we may have an effective treatment for the disease and not only its symptoms. 

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3. OTC contraceptives may not cause breast cancer, provided we make better choices!

The commonly used hormonal contraceptives are known to cause breast cancer – a disease that is a leading cause of death among women around the world. Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (aka EPFL) identified the different progestins (to act like progesterone) used in the contraceptives and studied their effects. As per Professor Brisken of EPFL, some progestins cause cell proliferation in the breast, whereas some do not.

The progestin types that had androgenic properties induced the protein Rankl, which has a major part to play in cell proliferation within the mammary epithelium. Anti-androgenic progestins did not show a similar effect. Exposure of the breast epithelia to androgenic progestins was found to have links with the development of pre-malignant lesions early on, at least in xenografted breast epithelia. The study concluded that anti-androgenic progestins, with or without oestrogen, were safer than those that contained compounds of testosterone. So informed selection of contraceptive could be the key to safeguard the user against breast cancer.

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4. If lockdowns and other preventive measures for COVID-19 were a cloud, here’s the silver lining

The preventive and containment measures implemented the world over for COVID-19 have shown a serious impact on almost all nations, however, there is also a positive angle to this. These public health measures drastically reduced the transmission of pathogens causing respiratory diseases. Diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis, and sepsis, which are caused by invasive bacteria often translate into serious and life-threatening illnesses among children and older adults. Nationwide lockdowns and the lack of socialising helped in reducing the transmission of these diseases to a great extent.

A team at Oxford University conducted a study to compare the number of respiratory infections during the pandemic with those from previous years (here’s our post based on The Lancet). The team studied the numbers for Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, and Neisseria meningitides, which were based on data from national laboratories and surveillance programmes from across 26 countries and territories, spanning six continents. The results for Streptococcus pneumonia were remarkable with a decrease in infections by 68 per cent at four weeks after implementation of preventive measures for COVID-19 and by 82 per cent at eight weeks. Overall, all countries were observed to have a substantial and sustained reduction in invasive bacterial infections between January and May 2020 as compared to the previous two years.

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Details of researches and studies referred to in the article can be found in the original articles. We hope you like this section and turn to it for a quick read every week.