Vitamin B1 May Help Alzheimer’s Patients

There are only two medications that have been approved for the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease. Just two.

Both are expensive to provide and administer and they must be closely monitored to prevent serious side effects.

But scientists at Emory Healthcare are part of a recent trial of thiamine, sometimes called Vitamin B1, that may show some promise as an effective and relatively inexpensive treatment, particularly in the early stages of the disease.

Initial studies have shown that a synthetic form of Vitamin B1, called Benfotiamine, can help improve the way the brain functions. Unlike natural thiamine, which dissolves in water, Benfotiamine is fat soluble and may support the lipids or fats in the blood that surround bundles of nerves in the brain and help maintain good brain health. For researchers like Dr. Chad Hales, the potential relationship between Benfotiamine and improvements in brain functioning have been promising.

“Thiamine itself is certainly involved in different metabolism-based processes within the brain, and it’s a necessary component within the brain. Although the underlying specific mechanism of how the medication works is not entirely clear.”

The basis for the optimism that Benfotiamine could help patients with an early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is based on a pilot study done at Cornell Medical Center and Columbia University that was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease in 2020.

It suggested that a 300-milligram dosage of Benfotiamine pills taken twice daily could slow the rate of decline in the small group of 35 patients with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer’s. Moreover, the treatment was completely safe.

The success of that early trial led to a $45 million grant from the National Institutes for Health to fund a large-scale, five-year study at several sites, including Emory, around the country.

The co-founder and Chief Science Officer of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, Dr Howard Fillit, is pleased that the results so far.

“With the improved biomarkers that have been developed since the pilot, this next phase will provide a deeper understanding of how Benfotiamine works in the brain. Novel approaches that target the many biological factors which contribute to Alzheimer’s, like metabolic dysfunction, are essential to finding effective treatments for this disease.”

The thiamine study is just one of the many directions Alzheimer’s research has taken, as the pace of research has accelerated. It is an exciting time for researchers like Dr. Hales of Emory.

“The speed with which the field has gone over the last two years, it’s a bit overwhelming. I feel like it’s almost every week, sometimes every day, where you hear something new that that is either changing your perspective or adding to some of the understanding that we have.”

But progress has come too late for Jackie Hibbert as this writer learned about, who is a former associate professor at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. She was an accomplished researcher in biochemistry, with a lifetime of work in finding a cure for Sickle Cell Disease.

But as she worked on finding a cure for one devastating disease, she was suddenly faced with how to confront another that was beginning to affect her memory.

At first, she thought it might just be depression, but as her effectiveness began to decline in the classroom, she and her husband were faced with the dreaded news that comes with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Today, now 70, her life as a medical researcher is over and she is dependent on her 77-year-old husband, Jim, for almost all aspects of her daily life. He is one of the few connections she has to the outside world.

“I attend several support groups,” her husband said, “and I listen to people talk about their circumstances. And in many ways, I find myself lucky that she is not where some of these poor folks are, where they’re having to live with the frustration level with the decline of their loved ones of the individuals that I hear talk in these support groups. And the other thing is, we talk about Alzheimer’s, we’re not hiding it. As in the case of some folks, they are in denial.”

Without any relief from the disease, whatever plans they have had as they’ve aged has disappeared. The biggest struggle has been to accept all that has happened over the last five years.

“We’re making do. I do compartmentalize it in my mind and try to cope. I try not to get emotional about it. Maybe that’s just the way I am. I know plenty of folks are very emotional about the disease.”

For more information on the Vitamin B1 study, please visit www.benfoteam.org.