Deep Brain Stimulation Shows Promise As Alzheimer’s Treatment

the Psychiatry Advisor take:

A treatment that uses electrical stimulation in a part of the brain impacted by Alzheimer’s disease may be able to stop or even reverse the disease.

Andres M. Lozano, MD, PhD, of Toronto Western Research Institute, and colleagues had six Alzheimer’s patients inserted with a pacemaker-like device in the hippocampus region of the brain, which is the area most impacted by Alzheimer’s.

Electrical impulses were then applied steadily in a method known as deep brain stimulation. The same method has been shown to benefit other neurocognitive disorders, notably Parkinson’s disease.

After one year, two patients had the size of their brain increase by, respectively, 5% and 8%, the researchers reported in the journal Brain Stimulation. Two patients saw advance of the disease slow down. In the other four patients, Alzheimer’s continued to advance and their brains shrunk.

Lozano told CTV News that he believes the stimulation spurred the brain growth in the two patients. But he also explained why the stimulation had no effect in the other four patients.

“We think the reason for that is, as you’re more advanced, these circuits are completely destroyed as the illness progresses,” he said. “So we think we went in too late in some of the patients.”

Lozano’s team is continuing the research with 42 patients, all of whom are in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Results are expected in the spring.