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New Alzheimer's Discoveries Could Lead To Better Treatments

As doctors learn more about Alzheimer's Disease, they are testing new ways to stop it, or at least delay it.

Current medications help with the symptoms of the mind-robbing disease, but can't cure it.

Scientists are using newly-found knowledge to try to develop better treatments.

Dr. Steven Dekosky is the director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

He says, "We know that there's inflammation in the brain. We're trying anti-inflammatory drugs to see if anti-inflammatory drugs would slow down the progression. We know that there is something called oxidative stress, where injury to the brain occurs because of biochemical imbalances. So we use what are called anti-oxidant mediations, vitamin E is an anti-oxidant, to see if it would slow down the progression."

Dr. Dekosky says if you delay the onset of Alzheimer's by 5 years, you decrease the number of people who get it by 50%.

Delay it for 10 years, and he says you could virtually wipe it out because people would die of old age or other causes first.