Research presented at an international conference on Alzheimer's disease in Chicago offers hope for the treatment of the devastating disease.
A phase II trial, of a drug called AL-108 in treating mild cognitive impairment (MCI), saw improvements on various measures of memory - MCI is the term used to describe the intermediate state between normal aging and the very earliest features of Alzheimer's.
The researchers from Duke University Medical Center, in North Carolina, say AL-108 targets the early abnormal brain changes in a protein called "tau" which are seen in the early stages of dementia.
The drug was given as a nasal spray over a 12 week period to 144 subjects, both men and women, age 55-85 years, at 16 centers across the U.S.
Dr. Donald Schmechel who led the research says a response was seen after just 4 weeks of treatment and a significant, improvement in short-term memory after 3 months treatment - the most common side-effect was headache.
Another study examined the brains of people with Alzheimer's who also had diabetes, and the researchers found that people in the study who took a combination of insulin and oral anti-diabetes medications had fewer Alzheimer's-related brain changes than others in the study.
The researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, say this could be a pathway for developing new treatments.
Dr. Michal Schnaider Beeri says previous research has shown that some people with diabetes have fewer brain lesions than non-diabetics and they suspected that treatment of diabetes with insulin and other drugs may have helped reduce the brain damage from Alzheimer's.