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Nose drops may improve treatment of Alzheimer's LONDON (September 2, 1998 2:31 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Nose drops could transform the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and other illnesses that waste away the brain, New Scientist magazine reported Wednesday, citing recent research by a neuroscientist in Minnesota. The magazine said that the nasal passage, which provides a direct link to the brain, could be the ideal conduit for delivering therapeutic drugs that cannot reach the brain through the blood. The molecules of many drugs are so large they cannot cross the blood-brain barrier -- cells in the blood vessels in and around the brain that form a kind of barrier to guard brain tissue. Finding an effective method of delivering drugs directly to the brain has been a stumbling block in treating neurological diseases. The neuroscientist, William Frey of the Alzheimer's Research Center at the Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., thought nose drops could be an ideal way to get a new treatment for the disease into the brain. "I knew that bad things could get in this way. It occurred to me that maybe good things could get in this way too," he said. He and his colleagues tested the theory on 12 rats. Half were given the treatment in nose drops and the rest in an injection. Within an hour of treatment Frey found that the treatment given in nose drops had reached the hippocampus, amygdala and other regions of the rats' brains not involved in smelling. In contrast, the rats that received injections had very little of the treatment in their brains. "The nose, they say, could deliver drugs not only for Alzheimer's disease but for a range of other neuro-degenerative conditions as well, including Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis," the weekly magazine said. Frey's team also used nose drops to administer insulin growth factor 1, a treatment for strokes, and found similar results. They will report their findings at a meeting of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists in San Francisco in November. Copyright 1998 Nando.net Copyright 1998 Reuters News Service a new voice: http://www.newcountry.nu/pd/members/janet/index.htm 51/10 - almonte/ontario/canada - [log in to unmask] janet paterson