Preventing or Postponing Alzheimer’s with a New Tool

There have been previous reports of the possibility that boosting immunity to one or more of the components of the pathological lesions seen in Alzheimer’s might be a valid approach to treatment, or prevention. While vaccines have so far proved disappointing, a less specific immunity booster, human immunoglobulin, has shown some promise. Now a study of the use of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) has been presented at an international meeting on advances in Alzheimer therapy.

Funded by Baxter Bioscience (a manufacturer of IVIg), New York and Philadelphia researchers analyzed data from a database of medical claims stored at Surveillance Data Inc. Of the 22 million subjects in the database, patients over 65 there were 847 who had received IVIg for one reason or another between 4/2001 and 9/2004, and had claims in the prior 1 year period, to ensure they had no Alzheimer’s. Data from 84,700 controls who hadn’t received IVIg and who were matched the treated patients 100:1 with respect to age, gender, and the Alzheimer risk factors diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and chronic kidney disease, served as controls.

During the follow-up period 2% of the IVIg-treated patients and 4.2% of the untreated controls were diagnosed with dementia. This suggests a 42% lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias in subjects who had been given IVIg.

The study abstract isn’t quite clear about the time interval between IVIg (or enrollment) and follow-up, and the analysis cannot, of course, provide information on how long the treated subjects were free of Alzheimer’s disease. Nevertheless, the numbers are impressive, and lend support to the concept that immunotherapy can be one answer to dealing with the Alzheimer epidemic.