The University of Antioquia advances research that seeks ways to prevent Alzheimer's

One of the main concerns for adulthood in all countries is the possibility of suffering from Alzheimer's, a delicate disease that directly affects brain cells and causes various disorders, including memory loss. Research around the world seeks to implement different treatments in order to reduce the impact of this symptomatology on humans. Colombia is not far behind, since Antioquia completed the first stage of the clinical study that seeks to strengthen Alzheimer's prevention in the country.

The University of Antioquia, through the Alzheimer Prevention Initiative (API Colombia), tested for eight years an experimental drug for the prevention of Alzheimer's in healthy people. The research was developed by the Neuroscience Group of Antioquia (GNA) belonging to the UdeA. 252 volunteers participated in this study, although it covered several regions of the country, the predominance of the participants was in the department of Antioquia.

The director of the GNA and principal investigator of the study, Francisco Lopera, explained the development of this study, which he has been tracing for more than a decade, for its subsequent analysis and application, Lopera stressed: “The API Colombia - Alzheimer Prevention Initiative - study implied that for eight years and three months a drug was tested for eight years and three months experimental for the prevention of the disease in healthy people, in a process for which we started looking for volunteers in 2011 and started with 252 in 2013, of which 238 people are still receiving treatment today, that is, 90% permanence and adherence”.

The lead clinical research coordinator at API Colombia, Marisol Londoño Castaño, provided details about the drug used in this research and its application process. Although there were two types of intervention in volunteers, at the end of the research intravenous injection predominated. In contrast to this, Londoño said: “We started the study with the drug Crenezumab subcutaneously and, as time went on, in other international studies it was shown that the higher the dose, the higher it was effectiveness. That's why we had several changes during the protocol, one of them was going to a higher dose that was applied, for a while, subcutaneously, and then another dose increase intravenously. At the end of the study we had most of the participants with high intravenous doses, which has shown, globally, to be more effective.”

This study allowed us to go beyond the data that were initially wanted, as the researchers found different genetic variants that originated precisely from the department of Antioquia, a region that has become an important niche for analysis, taking into account the extensive development of this pathology in the territory.

The results of this study will be obtained in approximately four months and will make it possible to determine the effectiveness of the medicinal product, which, if it does not show a positive effect, a plan b will be carried out. Added to this, the Lead Coordinator of the API in Colombia, explained the permanence of volunteers in the analysis and their participation in the future, on the subject, Londoño said: “The idea was to maintain a high adherence of volunteers, that all participants could complete all the scheduled study visits and evaluate in series the effectiveness of the drug Crenezumab, to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Of the 238 who completed Part A, 223 agreed to continue in the second phase of API Colombia, Part B, which is a maintenance phase while we wait for the results of Part A and, if these results are positive, we expect to have an extension of more than three years for those participants who agreed to continue.”

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