RESEARCH suggests that Alzheimer’s disease results from a combination of genetic, lifestyle, and environmental factors.
Using mice models and human cell lines, scientists recently investigated potential therapeutic treatments for individuals with a genetic risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Their results indicate that bumetanide, which is a commonly available oral diuretic drug, has a significant therapeutic response in treating the neurodegenerative condition.
The scientists conclude that bumetanide may one day become a potential treatment and prevention option for Alzheimer’s disease.
There is currently no known cureTrusted Source for Alzheimer’s disease. Studies suggestTrusted Source that this is because the neurodegenerative condition results from complex interactions between several genetic, lifestyle, and environmental factors.
Consequently, this has led to challenges in developing a single drug to treat every case of Alzheimer’s disease.
One studyTrusted Source suggests that the precision medicine approach may be a useful way to scale the drug discovery hurdle.
In precision medicine, disease treatment and prevention account for individual variations in genes, environment, and lifestyle and accommodate personalization based on the factors that may affect response to treatment.
Recently, scientists in the United States employed the precision medicine approach in targeting specific genes that increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
The aim was to investigate potential therapeutic options for the treatment of the neurodegenerative condition.
Corresponding study author Dr. Marina Sirota, Ph.D. — an associate professor at the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute (BCHSI) of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) — explained to Medical News Today the rationale behind their study.
Dr. Sirota said, “[W]e agnostically queried [Alzheimer’s] disease gene expression (whether certain genes are turned on or turned off) against a database of FDA-approved drugs to see which compounds might reverse the disease effects back to the normal state.”
