I took this photo during my visit to the vibrant, eclectic, City of Music, Nashville Tennessee on the morning of my interview with Channel 9’s Today Extra. Click here to watch our conversation about a promising new Australian drug trial for people with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). I felt the picture suited the subject because FTD can rob a person of the ability to communicate and socialise. The picture represents the restorative hopes of the trial. For more details, continue reading below.
Frontotemporal dementia became front-page news when Bruce Willis was diagnosed with the disease in 2023. He was initially described as having ‘aphasia’ — impaired ability to understand or produce speech — in 2022. FTDs account for about 10% of all dementias, are equally common in men and women, and tend to occur before the age of 65 — sometimes as early as 35. Three genes have been linked to the disease, and if a parent has FTD, their children may also get the disease if they inherit the causal gene. These cases are referred to as ‘familial’.
FTDs are so-called because they involve the frontal or temporal lobes of the brain, and there are several subtypes, based on whether symptoms are related to behaviour and personality changes, or language difficulties.
In the behavioural variant of FTD, symptoms can include acting inappropriately or impulsively, appearing selfish or unsympathetic, neglecting personal hygiene, overeating, or apathy.
Symptoms of the language variants of FTD are reduced comprehension, slowed speech, decline in verbal fluency, getting words in the wrong order and using words incorrectly.
FTD is often mistaken for depression, anxiety, or a midlife crisis because it occurs in younger people, and memory problems tend to only surface later in the disease.
And now for the good news. A naturally occurring, non-toxic compound called sodium selenate is the basis of a drug that is being trialled at Monash University in Melbourne. The drug targets the the build-up of abnormal proteins call ‘tau’ and clears them from the brain. These proteins are linked to about half of all FTD cases.
Taken as a pill, three times a day, the drug was found to not only protect mice from the disease, it actually reversed some of the symptoms. If you, or someone you know, has the behavioural variant of FTD you could be eligible to participate in the year-long trial. What makes this particularly promising is that the trial is funded by a federal grant, and, if effective, it would be cheap to manufacture and widely available because no one exclusively owns sodium selenate. Thus multiple companies could produce it.
To express interest in joining the trial:
Email: selenate@alfred.org.au
Website: https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=379271
Telephone: 03 9903 0121
To find out more about sodium selenate and bvFTD, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/SodiumSelenate/
Please share this Health-e-Byte with anyone who has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
