Bob Sessions has never had a drop of alcohol in his life. Yet at age 86, the teetotaler is eager to see if a natural compound found in red wine can combat disease.
Sessions enrolls Wednesday in a first-of-a-kind government-sponsored study examining whether resveratrol can alter or delay the destruction of the brain in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease.
Sessions is one of 5.3 million Americans who have Alzheimer's, a fatal illness that has no treatment or cure. He was diagnosed 7 years ago and still is in the early stages.
"If this research can help anyone, I will feel like I have contributed to a good cause," says Sessions, a former Methodist minister and academic. "I have lost family members to this disease and don't want to see my daughters or grandchildren suffer the same fate."
'Not an overnight process'
During the next year, Sessions, who lives in Gaithersburg, Md., will make 10 visits to Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., one of 26 sites nationwide affiliated with the study. Participants will be given either a placebo or capsules of pure resveratrol, found in the skin of red grapes, tomatoes, dark chocolate and nuts. Animal studies have shown it activitates a gene that protects the body and brain from aging. The greatest risk factor for Alzheimer's is aging; researchers will do baseline tests to identify biological markers of the disease and then other tests throughout the study to determine whether it is progressing.
"Alzheimer's is not an overnight process," says Laurie Ryan, program director for the National Institute on Aging's Alzheimer's Disease Clinical Trials program. "Symptoms don't appear until years after the disease has started. If we can delay it from starting or progressing, we add quality years to the end of life."
By the study's end, participants receiving resveratrol will be given 1,000 mg twice a day. That level of dosing can't be duplicated by sipping wine or eating bits of chocolate.
"We'll be testing levels equivalent to drinking 1,000 bottles of wine a day," says Georgetown's R. Scott Turner, the study's director. "We're trying mostly to determine the safety of that level, but I think it will be safe.
"Once we determine that, other studies would have to be done before anything could be developed for the consumer, but this is a big step."
Turner is one of nearly 600 researchers attending a two-day Alzheimer's summit at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., designed to map out the direction of the next generation of research. The government's National Alzheimer's Project Act is behind the push to find new treatments and a cure for Alzheimer's by 2025. The measure was signed into law last year by President Obama; the final plans are being announced today at the summit. Similar government programs for heart disease and cancer have been game-changers.
USA TODAY reported in February on an early draft of the plan that is similar to the final plan. Key goals are finding a cure by 2025, encouraging early diagnosis of the disease, ensuring quality treatment for patients and helping caregivers get support. Nearly 70% of Alzheimer's patients live at home.
A dismal track record
"This summit comes at a critical time in research," Turner says. "Despite major advances in our understanding of basic mechanisms of disease, the track record for drug discovery is dismal. The last discovery was in 2003."
Though metabolism and inflammation also play a role, plaques and tangles in the brain are regarded as the double-edged sword cutting through healthy brains. Turner's trial focuses on preventing tangles from forming in brain cells. In Alzheimer's patients, neurons die off at a faster rate than in people with normal cognitive skills and shed a protein called tau. Tau forms into tangles, causing havoc with the synapses required for cognitive functions. The researchers will test to see whether neuron loss decreases in people who receive resveratrol. "Levels of high tau will be regarded as a bad thing," Turner says.
Sessions knows the research might be too late to help him. He first started forgetting little things, then bigger things such as lifelong neighbors. Not just names, but who they are.
"I look to Julia (his wife) during those times and she knows to help me," Bob says with a sparkle in his eye. "She knows a million good things about me and now is learning one or two not-so-good things."
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