Alzheimer experts warn that significant advances will not be available for at least ten years

SPAIN (Agencies) Several Spanish experts of international repute yesterday warned jointly, via the Fundación Alzhéimer de España (FAE), that there are unlikely to be any significant advances in the eradication of the illness for at least another ten years. Treatment will probably be palliative rater than curative, so the experts advise patients and relatives not to hold out false hopes.>FAE brought together the country's leading researches and investigators for a meeting in Madrid last week. The foundation's President, Micheline Selmes, pointed out that symptomatic medication became available 15 years ago, but "nothing relevant is expected" until at least 2020, despite the fact that "false expectations are created periodically, and this results in frustration for patients as well as their families.">One of the main reasons for the problems, according to José Antonio López Guerrero, Director of Scientific Culture at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Centre, is that, unlike Parkinson's Disease, which can be detected in a particular spot in the brain, Alzheimer's is an 'unlocalized' degenerative disease. He also states that some "farcical businesses" have announced a possible cure with cellular therapies; these, he says, are "not real."

"At present, there is no clinical study in process using cellular therapy," says López Guerrero, referring to a so-called treatment from XCell at a cost of some €20,000, of which 95% of them [treatments] "haven't even been tried on animals."

The trouble with this illness, according to Cecilio Álamo, Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Alcalá de Henares, is that its specific origins are unknown. "It's like a giant puzzle with 5000 pieces, of which maybe some 500 have been found, but without knowing what sort of image will emerge from it. And some of the pieces apparently in place, are false."