Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials, Part 2 with Dr. Cherian Verghese

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

The following podcast is provided by a Themera Farma and answers for elders radio and welcome back to everyone to answers for elders radio network. And I am here with again Dr for geese, who is talking about Alzheimer’s disease. and Dr Ver Geese, I am so thrilled you were here and your background in neurology and research, medical research and finding breakthroughs for this disease, you’ve really been at the forefront of what’s happening out there and I’m so honored to visit with you. I know that you’re in the Philadelphia Pennsylvania area and for those listeners that are listening to us in Philly, I know that area very well and I’m just very excited to have you and I do want to come back and visit someday, that’s for sure. So I get you the best geese Dagun Tom Oh right there. He’s been there and have had many of them, so that’s a good thing. So let’s talk about you know, we’ve talked a little bit about the progression of the disease. What are you finding in our general population as far as of how medical you know, services and treatment for Alzheimer’s is reaching our population. First of all, you know we don’t have an integrated system of care delivery and that that is a kind of sad issue. In many European countries they have, you know, whole programs. Yeah, they’re designed to deliver services. Ours is bit more of a patchwork quilt and it really depends on, you know, what the stage of the diseases. So, as I had mentioned earlier, there’s a large number of people, we don’t know how many the statistics are for people who have already developed Alzheimer’s dementia, but the pre clinical group of people must be many times that and fortunately they don’t need services. It’s for the folks who have started that gentle decline into Alzheimer’s disease right and then into more moderate to severe dementia that you you need services. So in the earlier stages most people can be managed at home with some amount of support, and that’s what in the industry they call the assisted living level of support, which absolutely espouse. It may be a family member where they need some support, maybe with their finances, maybe even shopping, with cooking, maybe laying out their clothes in the morning to make the right choices. You know, matching your clothes for the weather and the occasion is among the hardest things in my wife will tell you I never get it right. WHOOOOO, that’s a wife’s job, you know. There you go. So in that assistant level living level of care, it could be done with family support, you know. Then you go into the moderate Sevia Dementia, and you certainly need in home care and at some stages maybe even institutional care. Right it is physically demanding, you know, to move somebody and to help them, you know, with the activities of baby living personal care. We simply do not have the resources. The last time I checked, a year in nursing home was about a hundred and forty thou dollars. Yeah, no, and it’s just crazy because again, our health care system, there’s so many things about our healthcare system for seniors that is tragic and it doesn’t meet the expectations, you know, that we need, or that they needs, that we have for our older adults and certainly with with what’s happening to and I think the other side of it is is that when early symptoms start to appear, there’s a lot of denial because there isn’t really any benchmarks out there of you know, to a family like if your loved one is doing x y Z. There’s not enough information that is reaching the public. The fact that, and and the second thing, even if you’re are being forgetful or answering, you know, asking the same question five minutes later, things like that, they’re there isn’t a path. People don’t perceive that there’s any treatment. They don’t perceive that there’s anything. They just pass it off. So there’s a lot of obviously we talked about denial, but I think the other thing is they don’t even know how to verbalize it to a doctor, and even the doctors and the healthcare professionals are not fully educated on, you know, the signs and what can be run and you know, we are all kind of forced into the state of learned helplessness where, you know, this myth that Alzheimer’s cannot be treated is just perpetrated. But you know, thanks to a global collaboration between pharmaceutical companies, between academia and independent developers of molecules that could be treated, we now have real options that are in advanced clinical trials that in three to five years could be approved treatments. There are no, let me clarify. There are no medicines today that are seen to be disease modified. Okay, two classes of medicines and they are mostly what we call symptomatic treatment, and that’s like taking tylon all for a bad cold or for Covid it may make your symptoms better, but it doesn’t affect the illness, doesn’t right. So we are looking in the field at many classes of medicines that could actually change the course of of this illness. Right, and you know this is just so important at every level. You know, fiscally, Alzheimer’s Disease Cost Two hundred and ninety billion dollars, if I remember in two thousand and nineteen. It’s expected to go to one point one trillion by twenty fifty. And I say this not not in jest, not as a joke, but if all the people that are expected to develop Alzheimer’s disease do develop Alzheimer’s disease, we won’t have enough trees to make depends for all those people, you know who, and we don’t have enough middle aged people to look after the elderly folks. You know, there’s what is called the population pyramid. Yeah, ours is going that away, where there are more elderly and less middle age and less younger people. Well, and it’s what we call the silver tsunami. I remember, I think by the year twenty thirty, which is what we’re talking eight years from now, forty percent of the population is going to be over the age of sixty five. Correct. So it’s crazy. It’s widely important we find medicis and a my one pitch is that we have medicines that could be effective, but they ain’t going to come to the market, to your CBS or where when you you without people taking part in trials. Right, right, and I think that’s important and you know I’m going to ask you also in this segment a little bit about communities of Color. I mean, I know in I, you know, we hear about it, especially we did. Finally, with there was a lot during the pandemic that people were trying to get vaccines to them and because they were behind the curve. Is that the case also with treatment of Alzheimer’s? Yes, sadly it’s well accepted now that African Americans are twice at the prevalence of Alzheimer’s is twice as much in the African American community than in the Caucasian community and one and a half times as much in the Hispanic population. So they’re disproportionately affected. But unfortunately, participation from, you know, communities of color is very low. In fact, with covid there was this criticism that the trials didn’t have enough inclusivity. So then how can you extrapolate the results and see, you know, if you have the same side effect profile, in the same efficacy profile in populations of color? So we at Kease to own clinical studies are taking this as our next challenge and have been working very hard to connect with and educate and get the message out to folks in the Greater Philadelphia Area, especially the communities of color. That’s there’s a higher risk and there are real options out there. Yes, and I think also Dr Ver Geese, you know, we reach just here in Seattle. There’s community centers that are you know, have a lot of seniors, a lot of low income seniors come to those as well as we have a lot of organizations that work directly with low income seniors and with communities of color. You know, we would love to kind of spearhead and help you in reaching them because they are they should be entitled to anything in all forms of treatment, and certainly to be a participate in a clinical trial is amazing because you’re getting treatment that other people don’t, that show promise, and that’s the thing that’s really amazing. It’s like, like, I love what you said. Is and less people can, you know, go towards these types of programs and do it. We’re not going to have the breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s on a large scale unless there is and there was an article published, sorry, there was an audible published in the Journal for Prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. Bruno Vel US was the author. Two Thousand and nineteen, and what he said was that we need seventy thousand people taking part in the clinical in clinical trials in the US alone to make cure a reality. Seven thousand and yeah, no where any of that. We are knowing, yes, and and we do. For those of you that are interested, I’m going to go ahead and give a website out to all of you that may be interested and want more information on this clinical trial. We have centers all over the United States that you can connect into. Dr Ver Geese’s in Philadelphia we also have clinics right here in greater puget sound as well as elsewhere, and and I’ve had the privilege of speaking with so many amazing doctors that are connected with a theory Farma, which is the organization that is sponsoring a new drug, and it is called Fosse Gooneamenton and what we just want to call it is Fosgo. So anyway, you can go to www dot lift ad that’s L ift, like lift up a package, AD like adcom. Get more information and Dr Vergeese, you’re going to come back with me. We’re going to talk a lot more about clinical trial, what it’s going to do, how it works and will be right act right after this. The preceding podcast was provided by a Thera farmer and answers for elders radio. For more information about the Alzheimer’s clinical trial, go to a thera clinical trialscom