Neuroscience Prof. Jeremy Tuttle earned a $1.4 million grant in August from the National Institute of Aging for his research about bladder control drugs and their possible effects on Alzheimer’s disease patients.
According to the NIA’s Web site, the NIA supports aging-related research in a range of fields including biological, neuroscientific, behavioral and social studies. Prospective grant recipients must apply for funding and undergo a series of peer and council reviews.
“I have worked [on] trying to understand the disease processes in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and this new project bridges the two areas of work,” Tuttle said. He explained that clinical reports suggesting that some drugs used for bladder control have a negative impact on a patient with Alzheimer’s were his motivation for getting involved in this specific research.
“There was a study in England on Parkinson’s patients where they found that people taking bladder control medication for more than two years had twice as much brain structural damage as patients [who] did not take the medication,” he added.
These bladder control drugs seemed to increase the speed at which elderly patients became more dependent upon other people and lost some cognitive abilities, Tuttle explained.
“There can be inappropriate use of bladder control drugs that could be damaging to the patients,” Tuttle said. “There is virtually no information about how all of this operates, and I think it is truly unfortunate that we don’t know anything about it, so discovering the mechanisms of how these might hurt people is important.”
In an attempt to replicate these findings, Tuttle said he tested the theory on mice.
“We studied an Alzheimer’s model mouse carrying two human genetic mutations that cause a rare, inherited form of Alzheimer’s disease,” Tuttle said. “We tested them for overactive bladder symptoms and we dosed the animals with a drug that’s used for bladder control.”
The results, however, of Tuttle’s tests were the opposite of what he anticipated. Instead of experiencing a decrease in cognitive function, the animals treated with the bladder control medication performed better in behavioral tests and had reduced brain structural damage, he said.
Although the result was not the same as his hypothesis, Tuttle maintained that it is still important to continue trying to understand the disease. Tuttle said his work could aid in the prevention of further brain damage in Alzheimer’s patients and provide new therapeutic angles to handle the disease.
“What his work is really important for is to understand how we can go forward to improve the quality of life for this aging population, which I think is going to be growing,” Neuroscience Prof. Kevin Lee said. “I believe that the NIA recognized that this work will provide important insights into how we can go about optimizing the quality of life during these years where the challenges will come to all of our bodies’ systems, be it the bladder or the brain.”
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