Giving Compass' Take:

• A new study using rats suggests that very low doses of a certain formulation of lithium can halt signs of advanced Alzheimer’s disease and recover lost cognitive abilities.

• How can more donors invest in scientific research targeted toward curing Alzheimer’s? 

• Watch this video on hope and help for those facing this disease. 

The lithium in the study was in a formulation that facilitates passage to the brain. The findings appear in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

The value of lithium therapy for treating Alzheimer’s disease remains controversial in scientific circles, largely because the information available until now has come from many different approaches, conditions, formulations, timing, and dosages of treatment. That makes the results difficult to compare.

In addition, continued treatment with high doses of lithium carries a number of serious adverse effects, which makes that approach impracticable for long-term treatments, especially in the elderly.

HOW MUCH LITHIUM?
Study leader Claudio Cuello of McGill University and graduate student Edward Wilson first investigated the conventional lithium formulation and initially gave rats a dosage similar to that used in clinical practice for mood disorders. The results of the initial tentative studies with conventional lithium formulations and dosage were disappointing, however, as the rats rapidly displayed a number of adverse effects.

That interrupted that approach, but it began again when an encapsulated formulation of lithium showed some beneficial effects in a different study involving a mouse model of Huntington disease.

The researchers then applied the new lithium formulation to a rat transgenic model expressing human mutated proteins causative of Alzheimer’s, an animal model they had created and characterized. This rat develops features of the human Alzheimer’s disease, including a progressive accumulation of amyloid plaques in the brain and concurrent cognitive deficits.

Read the full article about treating Alzheimer's with lithium by Jason Clement at Futurity.