New drug aims to inhibit dementia

IN a world-first trial, Victorians with a devastating form of dementia that strikes in middle age will be given a drug aimed at slowing the progression of the disease.

Thousands of Australians have the neurodegenerative condition that causes changes in their personality and behaviour or language skills, depending on which part of the brain is damaged.

Frontotemporal dementia typically occurs between 45-65 and is estimated to affect up to 11,500 Australians.

In the Royal Melbourne Hospital trial 15 patients will be given a drug already shown to be safe in humans for other diseases.

If successful, it would become the first disease modifying therapy for behaviouralvariant frontotemporal dementia.

Professor Terence O’Brien, head of the University of Melbourne Department of Medicine at the hospital, said patients will be given sodium selenate tablets and tests to look for changes in the brain over a 12 month period.

Almost half of people with this type of young-onset dementia have tangles of tau in their brain that block brain cell function.

“We hope it will clear the tangles in the brain and prevent further build-up,” Prof O’Brien said.

Alzheimer’s Australia acting CEO Leanne Wenig said trials like this were urgently needed given to stop the number of dementia diagnoses increasing to 1.1 million by 2056.

Suzie O’Sullivan, 58, had to wait almost three years to get a diagnosis of FTD, after initially being told her symptoms could be linked to menopause.

“Things that I used to know, like words or recipes that you have known all your life are gone,” she said.

The drug trial is funded by the Royal Melbourne Neuroscience Foundation.