[ExI] good bexarotene article

[Brian Manning Delaney]

El 2012-02-11 15:59, Isabelle Hakala escribió:
> How difficult would it be to find someone with Alzheimer AND the
> particular type of cancer that it is used for... that seems as though
> there must be SOMEONE out there... and odds are they would be willing to
> take it for their cancer... esp if it might help their Alzheimers...
> Seems as though that would be an easy enough test. It isn't like they
> would say 'oh... you can't take this drug for your cancer because it
> might help your Alzheimers too, and that would be experimenting'.


Excellent idea!

A twist on your question: might it be possible to find enough people who 
/already have/ taken the drug to look for a meaningful reduction in rate 
of Alzheimer's compared to matched controls? The matching would be 
tricky of course: look at age-, sex-, etc.-matched controls who also had 
skin cancer? Then the sample is tiny. Or forget the cancer in the 
matching, under the assumption it's not significantly related to the 
dev. of Alzheimer's? (Though there probably is an indirect relation via 
cancer's impact on exercise levels and diet, which also affect risk of 
Alzheimer's.) Either way, there's got to be some useful data already out 
there, seems to me. The drug has been in use for nearly 13 years. The 
number of people who've taken it might be many thousands. Let's take a 
look at them!

-Brian