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WILKES-BARRE — As a physician who cares for older adults, Dr. Mario Cornacchione is all too familiar with the heartache and hardships of Alzheimer’s disease.
“It’s just a devastating disease, not just for the patient, who loses their sense of who they are and what their life experiences were, but for the families who go through multiple stages of grieving,” said the geriatrician, who divides his time between the Northeast Pennsylvania Memory and Alzheimer’s Center in Plains Township and The Commonwealth Medical College.
“Each stage of the disease brings further loss of communication and it’s such a slow, progressive disease, families are going through that loss again and again,” he said.
While there’s is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease at this point, Cornacchione is hopeful that a potential drug called intepirdine, still in the investigative stages, may slow the progress of the disease.
The doctor is eager to enroll people who have mild to moderate Alzheimer’s Disease in a 6-month study, during which some participants would take the compound in pill form while others would take a placebo.
Researchers hope intepirdine, which is designed to be taken with another drug called donepezil (Aricept), would help people with their cognition and ability to perform such daily tasks as dressing, eating and bathing, housework and using the telephone.
Intepirdine, which has the potential to become the first new Alzheimer’s medication to be approved in 13 years, is designed to work by increasing levels of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine in the brain.
A smaller study had positive results, Cornacchione said, and the patients he enrolls would be part of a larger study of 1,000 people at 80 sites in the United States and 50 in other countries.
“We’d anticipate (the drug) would not make the disease go away but would help with the symptoms on a daily basis,” he said.
Every patient who participates, whether they receive the intepirdine or a placebo, will be eligible to receive the drug for a year after the first six months are completed.
In addition to that potential benefit, the doctor said, people who take part in the study are helping future Alzheimer’s patients.
“For many patients and their families, there is a sense of altruism when they take part in a study,” he said.
Alzheimer’s patients or their caregivers are welcome to call the Northeast Pennsylvania Memory & Alzheimer’s Center at 570-262-0664 for more information.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s Disease or a related dementia, and in 2015 more than 15 million caregivers provided an estimated 18.1 billion hours of unpaid care. Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death in this country.