#7-Blog – AI – Tool To Combat Alzheimer’s Disease

Artificial Intelligence – Tool To Combat Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (senile dementia) – is a progressive neurological disorder which destroys memory and other mental functions as the brain cells (neurons) start degenerating eventually leading to their death. This disease has been amongst us since generations, but is now becoming a lifestyle disease with growing age posing to be a threat for future generations. Current treatment methods can reduce the progression of this condition but cannot cure this disease.

Researchers have been trying to find a permanent solution to this disease, but various drugs have failed at clinical trials, quoting a few examples like Semagacestat and Avagacestat failing due to toxicity and lack of efficiency. While analyzing the situation, researchers came up with ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – a method to screen currently available medications as possible treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. What is the purpose of this method? The answer to this is, these therapies will give us an insight into newer methods, reveal unexplored targets for therapy by pointing towards the mechanism of drug action.

Branch of Artificial Intelligence has systems trained on vast amount of data, and are made to identify and reveal patterns helping researchers and clinicians analyze further. Identification of drugs that had protective as well as damaging effects on brain cells was also made possible, which in turn helped in identifying and filtering out neurotoxic drugs that accelerated neuronal death instead of preventing it.

Many FDA-approved and clinically tested drugs were screened by this method and the analysis yielded several anti-inflammatory drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and blood cancers to be at the top, as these drugs belong to a class of medications called as Janus kinase inhibitors which is suspected to play a role in Alzheimer’s disease and also known for their role in autoimmune conditions.

So till date many drugs have been screened and many are still being screened to find newer therapy to completely cure Alzheimer’s disease. Let us hope to a have a permanent solution to this disease in the coming days.
That’s all for the day. Happy reading and Thank you!