Drug Appears to Slow Alzheimer’s

An anti-aluminum drug appeared to sharply slow the decay of Alzheimer’s disease patients in a study, providing new evidence for a link between the metal and the devastating illness, Canadian researchers reported Thursday.

A study of 48 Alzheimer’s patients found that those injected with the drug desferrioxamine, or DFO, twice a day, five days a week for 24 months deteriorated half as quickly as those who did not receive the drug.

“Our main finding was that sustained low doses of DFO slow the clinical progression of the dementia of Alzheimer’s disease,” wrote Dr. D. R. McLachlan and his colleagues at the University of Toronto in their study published in the Lancet, a British journal.

The researchers cautioned that the study needed to be followed up with a larger trial involving more than one center before any definitive conclusion could be reached.