Dementia drug trial offers thousands hope

SUFFERERS of a devastating form of dementia will be given a drug aimed at slowing the disease in a world-first Australian trial.

Thousands of Australians have the neuro-degenerative condition that can change personality, behaviour or language skills.

About 11,500 Australians are affected by frontotemporal dementia, which typ- ically occurs between ages 45 and 65.

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

If it is successful, it would become the first diseasemodifying therapy for behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia.

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

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

“We hope it will clear the tangles and prevent further build up and neurodegeneration and it has done that in preclinical trials,” Professor O’Brien said.

Alzheimer’s Australia acting head Leanne Wenig said such clinical trials were urgently needed

Victorian sufferer Suzie O’Sullivan, 58, has had to stop driving and working but tries to keep as mentally and physically healthy as possible.

“Trials like this are so important because there is nothing you can take for it,” Ms O’Sullivan said.

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