Experimental Drug Shows Early Potential to Treat Dementia
Scientists found that an experimental drug, sodium selenate, is safe and well tolerated in patients with a type of dementia that often strikes early in adulthood.
Sodium selenate, an ingredient often included in vitamin supplements, appears safe to test as a treatment for dementia, the results of a preliminary study suggest.
The safety study included 12 people with what’s known as behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), a form of cognitive decline that can develop early in adulthood and lead to dramatic personality and behavior changes. People with this condition tend to behave in socially inappropriate ways and lack empathy, judgment, and self-control. There is currently no treatment for this rapidly progressing form of dementia, and people often die within a decade of diagnosis.
All the patients took a 15 milligram (mg) dose of sodium selenate three times daily. The main goal of the yearlong study was to assess the drug's safety. While each participant experienced some side effects, no serious side effects were treatment-related. Common side effects included nail changes, hair loss, headache, muscle aches, and fatigue.
None of the patients dropped out of the trial, another early indication that this drug may be safe for treating dementia, the researchers reported May 5 in Alzheimer’s and Dementia: Translational Research and Clinical Interventions.
“Sodium selenate is safe and well tolerated in patients with bvFTD,” the study team wrote.
Scientists also looked at the potential impact of sodium selenate on brain function using both cognitive and behavioral assessments and brain scans and lab tests to look for markers of changes that are associated with dementia. They found that behavioral issues that would normally worsen remained stable with treatment, and there was less shrinkage of brain tissue than typically occurs with disease progression.
These results build on findings from another preliminary trial in Alzheimer’s patients, said the lead study author, Lucy Vivash, a neuroscience research fellow at Monash University in Australia, in a statement. In the earlier trial, patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease were randomly assigned to take sodium selenate or a placebo. People who took the drug had less cognitive decline than those who didn’t.
On the basis of the new study results, researchers concluded that it makes sense to run a clinical trial — one that randomly gives some people sodium selenate and others a placebo — to test how well the drug slows or stops disease progression in patients with bvFTD.
Much longer trials, with far more patients, would still be needed before sodium selenate could win U.S. marketing approval as a treatment for bvFTD. Many experimental medicines that look promising in preliminary safety trials ultimately end up being ineffective or having serious side effects when they’re tested in larger human studies.
May 11, 2022
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