Probiotics for Alzheimer's Disease

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Art (California ) on 04/12/2018:
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Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a tough disease that is growing each year in the number of people it affects. Unfortunately the currently available medications are not very effective at treating the disease process and are even less effective for some people with AD. It is estimated that 5.7 million Americans are now living with AD!

https://www.alz.org/facts/

With the Baby Boomers now in the senior citizen range, the number of people with AD is expected to reach unprecedented proportions that could potentially bankrupt are medical system because of the tremendous costs involved in the care of AD patients. These costs will continue to rise over time.

Given the poor prognosis for AD patients in general with the currently available meds that are unable to stop the disease process, we need alternatives to act as adjunctive help to go along with the prescription meds.

On that note, the following study shows that a 12 week course of a specific probiotic treatment was able to improve some disease symptoms in the treated patients. What is good about this study is that it is an actual human study as opposed to a mouse or rat study because those models do not always equate to humans in a like manner. A good example of this was the niacinamide mouse study that was done at the University Of Irvine California that showed almost complete reversal of AD symptoms in the AD model mice. The results were so good that a human study was done shortly after the results from the mouse study were released. Unfortunately the human study showed only marginal benefit at best for people with AD.

Here is a link to the probiotic / AD study:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5105117/

Another great point to this study is that the positive results were seen in just 12 weeks! It makes you wonder if a longer study period would have produced even better results. Another great positive to this studies is that other health parameters were improved along with cognition!

Probiotics have a good safety profile, are readily available and the ones used in this study are not the exotic ones which are almost impossible to find when you search. This is great news for people living with this horrible disease that affects not only the patient, but their family, friends and caregivers negatively.

Art

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