“That’s really scary.” Those are the words of Neil Carey, a retired social worker who is 87. Carey is describing his occasional memory lapses that aren’t due to traditional Alzheimer’s.
As Carey explained it to the New York Times, he formerly had a “wonderful vocabulary,” but presently his “field of words is far reduced.” While he still reads, exercises and socializes, Carey increasingly forgets names and details, and recently forgot a minister’s homily at church despite listening very closely.
Mentioned previously is that Carey doesn’t have Alzheimer’s in the amyloid sense, but he does have what’s described as LATE. Short for Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, LATE is estimated to affect something like a third of people aged 85 and older, and around 10 percent of those 65 and up. It’s no insight to point out that the population of both age ranges is poised to go up, which means the cognitive decline associated with LATE will grow in number. Which is scary.
For those in their fifties and sixties, and who look and feel young, it’s worrying to imagine what possibly awaits. While the realities of life expectancy in the past frequently took people before LATE, Alzheimer’s, and other old-people maladies could reveal themselves, it will be increasingly true in the future that the elderly who long cherished their live minds, along with an ability to read and socialize, will have to live with the cruelty of living without their once good and great minds.
LATE involves what the Times describes as the “abnormal accumulation of another protein, called TDP-43.” Which is where there’s perhaps room for optimism. Doctors now think that the success rate of Alzheimer’s-related drugs may have been compromised by LATE sufferers taking a drug unrelated to their cognitive problem.
The good news is that with doctors and scientists having diagnosed the very real difference between Alzheimer’s and LATE, there’s clinical testing taking place for a drug meant more specifically for LATE. Nicorandil, a product of Japan’s Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., was initially brought to market to treat chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart.
Nicorandil has shown promise as an antidote to problems associated with LATE. If so, readers young and old can surely imagine the meaning of this to people on the doorstep of old, or already there. What if some of the worst aspects of aging can be mitigated?
All of which calls for the policy proposals that invariably follow these optimistic accounts of pharmaceutical advance. It recalls a recent quip by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos: “Literally put me in front of a whiteboard, and I can come up with 100 ideas in an hour.” Yes!
Please think about what Bezos said while contemplating the minds at pharmaceutical labs across the U.S., and the world. So many ideas, so many thoughts on ways to turn today’s disease into tomorrow’s afterthought, but the path to cure is paved with endless, wildly expensive experimenting that much more often than not reveals failed hypotheses. Which is the crucial point.
The path to success is paved with failure. This must be remembered as pharmaceutical companies are attacked for their prices, and threatened with price controls. The true victims of such mindless thinking are scared people young and old, and who are scared because there’s presently no fix for what ails them.
That people are living longer means LATE and other cognitive challenges promise to multiply. Let’s please get out of the way of pharma innovators now so that those not yet old never have to intimately know all the horrors of what it is to be old.
Originally posted to Real Clear Markets.
