BUYING TIME

By Dick Thompson

With no cure for Alzheimer's Disease in sight, researchers have concentrated on trying to slow the rate at which it corrodes the brain and to postpone its onset. Any delay would enable victims to continue to live independently, their memories intact, and lessen the burden on their families and society. If the onset were pushed back only five years, it could save the U.S. $50 billion annually.

Now scientists have begun to do just that. A report published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine shows for the first time that the mental deterioration of Alzheimer's can be slowed significantly by two common drugs: vitamin E and selegiline, a compound used to treat Parkinson's disease. The two-year study conducted by the National Institute on Aging showed that normal doses of selegiline or high doses of vitamin E, both of which are antioxidants, slowed the rate of disability among patients with moderately severe Alzheimer's by an average of seven months. Neither drug reversed the disease, and their potency decreased when they were taken together.

But for those patients who took one or the other, the effects were dramatic. They were able to maintain daily functions, such as dressing themselves and handling money, and they stayed out of institutions months longer than patients not on the drugs. "The effect is very important," says Columbia University neuropsychologist Mary Sano, who led the study. "These are outcomes that relate to the quality of life of the patients and their families."

Researchers now want to give the drugs to patients in earlier stages of Alzheimer's. The hope is that these or other drugs currently under development, given early enough, might postpone the disease indefinitely.

--By Dick Thompson