An anti-inflammatory rheumatoid arthritis drug restores speech in Alzheimer's patients, but experts worry that the small, not-so-rigorous study may give people false hope:
The study, reported on Sunday in the journal BioMed Central BMC Neurology, involved 12 patients who had greatly improved language recall shortly after treatment with Enbrel, or etanercept, an anti-inflammatory drug co-marketed by Amgen and Wyeth.
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Tobinick believes the drug may work in the brain by blocking an excess of tumor necrosis factor-alpha or TNF-alpha, which may affect communication in the brain.
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Tobinick acknowledged the study is limited because people knew they were getting the drug. Alzheimer’s patients in such open-label studies often show improvement.“Placebo effect is an enormous problem in open-label studies,” said Dr. Scott Turner, incoming director of the Memory Disorders Program at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington.
Turner said the true test must come from a more scientifically rigorous double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial. In such studies, patients receive either a dummy treatment or an active agent, and neither the doctor nor the patient knows which.