NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) – A bio-engineering based head device shows promise of potentially slowing down or reversing Alzheimer’s Disease.
A pilot study at the University of South Florida Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute found it reversed seven of the eight patients’ memory loss.
For two months, participants with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s like Janet Sizeler were treated at home for one hour, twice a day.
Husband Larry says, “She was beginning to experience more and more of the confusion.”
Now it appears her short term memory has improved.
“There were some people names that she could not and others, now she remembers everyone,” says her caregiver.
The electromagnetic cap breaks up the proteins, believed to cause Alzheimer’s.
“The electronic magnetic waves just separates these into their individual singular form,” points, Neuroscientist, Dr. Gary Arendash, CEO of NeuroEM Therapeutics – the company behind the technology.
He goes onto say, “We are not looking to slow down the disease process, we are looking to reverse it.”
And the findings he says are clinically meaningful, “Clinically meaningful means it’s something that you should be able to see. It’s as if they went back in time to their better memory performance of a year ago.”
A partnership with Connecticut entrepreneur and inventor Eric Knight — has fueled this battle against Alzheimer’s.
Knight says, “I was reading his study in a consumer magazine and it dawned on me that there might be a possibility to take my aerospace background in technology in developing antennas for rockets and combine that with Dr. Arendash’s brilliance in using radio waves to treat the disease.”
The device has undergone a transformation in nearly ten years.
“I just want to make the world a little better place,” says Knight, “It’s based on science and not just hope.”
Janet Sizeler, no longer fights depression, “I’ve come back, I’ve come back.”
And back to a more orderly routine.
“Laundry, vacuuming, changing the sheets, doing the dishes,” she says.
Optimistic about what lies ahead, she signed on for an extended four month study.
Dr. Arendash says they want to expand the study to more than 120 patients at multiple sites, possibly later this year. Details though are still being worked out.
If everything goes well, the device could possibly be available in two and a half years.
You can read more about the findings in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
For more information – head to https://neuroem.com/
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