Could arthritis drug combat Alzheimer's?

theguardian.com -

As a psychiatrist, he's had little formal training in immunology, but has spent much of his time of late trying to figure how immune cells in the body communicate with others in the brain. These signals into the brain, he thinks, accelerate the speed at which neurons – nerve cells in the brain – are killed in late-stage Alzheimer's disease and at the beginning of next year he hopes to test the idea that blocking these signals can stop or slow down disease progression.

Holmes has been testing etanercept , a drug widely used for rheumatoid arthritis. It blocks the production of TNF-alpha, one of the signalling molecules, or cytokines, used by immune cells to communicate with each other. In the next few months, he expects the results of a pilot trial in people with Alzheimer's. If they are positive, he'll test the strategy in people with only the mildest early forms of the disease.