Science AMA Series: We’re scientists from the Brough Lab at the University of Manchester and we recently found that a commonly used period medication is effective against rodent models of Alzheimer's disease, Ask Us Anything!

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Hi Reddit!

Alzheimer’s disease is a chronic, debilitating neurodegenerative disorder affecting over 26 million people worldwide. Exactly what causes the development and progression of Alzheimer’s disease is still largely unknown; however, there is increasing evidence for a role of inflammation in promoting disease progression.

Inflammation is a beneficial response by your body to tissue damage or infection. However, in diseases like Alzheimer’s, when inflammation is chronic or excessive it can cause problems. Studies have found that the rate of Alzheimer’s disease is lower in people taking drugs which reduce inflammation such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs). This resulted in small, short term clinical trials of NSAIDs in Alzheimer’s disease; yet the results were negative. However, the kinds of NSAIDs used only inhibit one of the many pathways which our bodies use to regulate inflammation.

Our research group found that one NSAID called mefenamic acid inhibits two key inflammation signalling pathways involved in Alzheimer’s disease progression. We then tested mefenamic acid in two animal models of Alzheimer’s disease and found that the treated animals had improved memory and less inflammation in their brains. Mefenamic acid is a safe and commonly available drug currently used to treat period pain and, therefore, could be quickly and (relatively) cheaply progressed into clinical trials. See below for a short video to explain our research.

We are:

PhD student Mike Daniels - I started my PhD here in Dr David Brough's lab at the University of Manchester a few years ago working on inflammation in brain disease, specifically Alzheimer's disease. I've been working on the study we published recently since day 1 and ran the initial characterisation of the NSAIDs we tested. It'd been incredible to see how it's grown!

and

postdoc Dr Jack Rivers-Auty - I moved to Manchester from New Zealand at the same time as Mike and am also investigating the role of the inflammasome in Alzheimer’s disease in the Brough Lab. My expertise lie in using animal models to investigate disease and I led the mouse study we ran in the paper.

Ask us anything!!

Links:

Press release – http://ift.tt/2b97MBy

Full paper – http://ift.tt/2bkSkHQ

Video explanation – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikvSTtBr9k0

">Science AMA Series: We’re scientists from the Brough Lab at the University of Manchester and we recently found that a commonly used period medication is effective against rodent models of Alzheimer's disease, Ask Us Anything!