WHAT a strange week for Alzheimer’s disease.
Rachelle Doody of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, gave 120 patients Dimebon, an antihistamine drug, for a year. Their scores on practical cognitive ability tests rose significantly compared with those receiving a placebo, and their symptoms seemed to improve the longer they took the drug – a first for an Alzheimer’s drug (The Lancet, vol 372, p 207).
Yet in the same issue (p 216), a team led by Clive Holmes of the University of Southampton, UK, report that a vaccine that helps to destroy the protein plaques thought to…
