
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 29, 1993                   TAG: 9311290034
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DISEASE FACING DEFEAT

Jane Wirsig first started complaining of persistent fatigue in 1976, but the watershed event in the Princeton, N.J., woman's illness came while she was doing her household accounts the next year. She abruptly stood up, slapped her leg in frustration, and told her husband Woodrow, "Something's wrong. I've forgotten how to subtract."

Wirsig was one of 4 million Americans who suffer from Alzheimer's disease. By 1986, she couldn't walk, couldn't talk, didn't recognize her husband, and choked on her food.

That year, her husband enrolled her in an early experimental trial of a recently approved Alzheimer's drug called tacrine and her condition immediately improved. "She stopped choking, she could walk again - and best of all . . . she could recognize me and tell me `I love you too,' " Woodrow Wirsig said. "The [drug] gave my wife another three years of an acceptable quality of life" before she died in 1989 at age 69.

Jane Wirsig's story, told in Woodrow's book "I Love You, Too," is one that is likely to be repeated in the future.

In the past two years, researchers have been reporting unprecedented successes in understanding the causes of Alzheimer's disease and developing new therapies.

Spurred by the recent discovery of genes that promise to provide an explanation of how Alzheimer's develops, some researchers believe they are on the verge of producing revolutionary new treatments to delay the onset of Alzheimer's, and perhaps even to prevent it.

"I am absolutely convinced that within 10 years we will have a pill that prevents Alzheimer's disease," said Dr. Allen Roses of Duke University, who discovered the genetic link.

Tacrine is still the only approved Alzheimer's drug, but two others, estrogen and an anti-inflammatory called indomethacin, have been shown in recent small studies to delay the onset of the disease and reduce its effects. At least 15 other drugs are now in clinical trials. Grafts of fetal cells are also likely to be tried as therapy within the next six months.

Perhaps the greatest excitement now, however, revolves around the recent genetic discovery linking Alzheimer's to a protein that carries fats in the blood.

The new findings are thought to be so important that researchers and the Alzheimer's Association are mobilizing an all-out effort to obtain $100 million in additional research funds from Congress to follow up on them.

Alzheimer's is a disease of aging. It affects perhaps 3 percent of people aged 65 to 74, 20 percent of those aged 74 to 84, and as many as 50 percent of those over the age of 85, a total estimated at 4 million in the United States alone. The number of people over 65, and thus at risk, is expected to double within the next 30 years.

by CNB