People with higher Leptin levels have significantly reduced incidence of AD and dementia

This week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (Dec 16) features a report on a long-term, prospective study of elderly, dementia-free individuals led by researchers from Boston University School of Medicine and the Framingham Heart Study focusing on the association between the protein hormone Leptin and the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Specifically, people with higher baseline circulating Leptin levels were found to have a significantly reduced incidence of AD and dementia. Individuals in the lowest quartile of gender-specific Leptin levels had an absolute AD risk of 25%, while persons in the highest quartile had only a 6% risk over a 12-year follow-up period.

Professor Mark A. Smith, Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of Neurotez and Professor of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University stated “In support of the importance of Leptin in AD, the article quotes experimental data from Neurotez where we have shown that Leptin decreases the underlying AD pathology and improves memory function in animals.” In the article’s conclusion, and citing another paper from Neurotez, the authors state, “... more importantly, (these findings) may open new pathways for possible preventive and therapeutic interventions.”

“Neurotez was not at all involved in this important study,” said Neurotez CEO Nikolaos Tezapsidis, “but the results strongly support our plans to take a Leptin product into clinical trials as a novel hormone replacement therapy for AD.”

Comments from Dr. J. Wesson Ashford, MD, PhD (Stanford/VA Aging Clinical Research Center in Stanford, Calif.) who is leading the Neurotez trial and is co-investigator in an SBIR grant to Neurotez can be found in an interview at WebMD published yesterday: http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20091215/more-leptin-may-mean-less-alzheimers

AD represents a major unmet medical need, with current medicines providing only limited symptomatic relief, representing a global market of $5 billion.

Source Neurotez, Inc.