Scyllo-inositol appears promising for Alzheimer's disease
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Scyllo-inositol " is an exciting experimental therapy, but until it has actually been tested in humans, it should not be considered the cure for Alzheimer's disease," St George-Hyslop said. " There are many things that are very promising when done in animal models that turn out to either not work in humans or to have unexpected toxicity." St George-Hyslop and his colleagues are optimistic that scyllo-inositol will be less toxic to humans than some previous drug candidates for Alzheimer's disease. A vaccine designed to destroy beta-amyloid, for example, was first tested successfully in the same type of mice used in the scyllo-inositol studies, but the vaccine turned out to be toxic in some humans. It caused an autoimmune reaction in about 10 percent of patients who were immunized, St George-Hyslop said.Autoimmune responses shouldn't be a problem with scyllo-inositol. " This compound works by a different mechanism and doesn't involve immunizing a patient with his own protein, which was probably the origin of the allergic reaction to the vaccine, " the researcher said.Another complication with previous attempts to treat Alzheimer's disease has been that some compounds, such as beta secretase inhibitors, cannot enter the brain easily, St George-Hyslop explained. Scyllo-inositol, on the other hand, readily passes through the blood-brain barrier where it is made available to the central nervous system.Even if scyllo-inositol does prove safe and effective in humans, patients will likely still need drugs designed to attack other aspects of Alzheimer's pathology, such as tau neurofibrillary tangles, St George-Hyslop said.