Dr. Mark D'Esposito

And again, it just has not been...

successful.

It's very frustrating because I think it was over probably 35 years ago I saw my first Alzheimer's patients and I don't believe I say that much different to them now, you know, except that we have a lot more things we can do just on the social side of things.

But unfortunately for drugs, we don't have anything that's been really transformative.

But again, I think part of being a neurologist, it sounds very depressing, but I think part of what the family isn't always looking for a cure.

Of course, they'd like to have a cure, but I think them understanding what's going on, what to expect, how to handle the behaviors is what they're really after, at least until we find a cure.

I've heard of it, yeah.

Yeah, I don't think you can really get in enough L-DOPA to get enough into your brain.

That happened early in neurology when it was discovered we couldn't give our patients enough L-DOPA without them feeling bad because it's also metabolized in the periphery.

And so it wasn't until Sinemet came along, which has this decarboxylase inhibitor that blocks sort of the...

the breakdown of dopamine that we were able to sort of get enough dopamine into the brain.

So that's why I think it's not going to probably get the levels up high enough in the brain.

All we've got is to help them with everything that comes up on a day-to-day basis.

A lot of the problems, the memory problems tend to be something that families can help compensate for, but you do get to a point where you can't be with someone for 24-7.

It's a real burnout for caregivers.

A lot of the behaviors that come up, patients get kind of delusions and agitated and some of the medications that we use for other conditions are helpful for treating that.

But it's really just a purely symptomatic therapy.

And the more socialization that patients get, they tend to do better.

There was a study back at Penn way back that if you showed patients

family movies or family albums, it was better than any drug you could give them to sort of help their behavior.