Structural and functional rejuvenation of the aged brain by an approved anti-asthmatic drug

Maybe you want to see what human research followup and protocols your doctors created from this in the past four and a half years.  Or you could let the incompetent sleeping dogs lie.  Your choice, it will just impact how well your children and grandchildren recover from a stroke.

Structural and functional rejuvenation of the aged brain by an approved anti-asthmatic drug

Nat Commun. 2015 Oct 27;6:8466. doi: 10.1038/ncomms9466.

Marschallinger J^1,2, Schäffner I³, Klein B^1,2, Gelfert R^1,2, Rivera FJ^1,2, Illes S^1,2, Grassner L^1,2,4, Janssen M^1,2, Rotheneichner P^1,2,5, Schmuckermair C⁶, Coras R⁷, Boccazzi M⁸, Chishty M⁹, Lagler FB¹⁰, Renic M¹¹, Bauer HC^2,12, Singewald N⁶, Blümcke I⁷, Bogdahn U¹³, Couillard-Despres S^2,5, Lie DC³, Abbracchio MP⁸, Aigner L^1,2.

Author information

Abstract

As human life expectancy has improved rapidly in industrialized societies, age-related cognitive impairment presents an increasing challenge. Targeting histopathological processes that correlate with age-related cognitive declines, such as neuroinflammation, low levels of neurogenesis, disrupted blood-brain barrier and altered neuronal activity, might lead to structural and functional rejuvenation of the aged brain. Here we show that a 6-week treatment of young (4 months) and old (20 months) rats with montelukast, a marketed anti-asthmatic drug antagonizing leukotriene receptors, reduces neuroinflammation, elevates hippocampal neurogenesis and improves learning and memory in old animals. By using gene knockdown and knockout approaches, we demonstrate that the effect is mediated through inhibition of the GPR17 receptor. This work illustrates that inhibition of leukotriene receptor signalling might represent a safe and druggable target to restore cognitive functions in old individuals and paves the way for future clinical translation of leukotriene receptor inhibition for the treatment of dementias.

PMID:

26506265

PMCID:

PMC4639806

DOI:

10.1038/ncomms9466

[Indexed for MEDLINE]

Free PMC Article

Can An Anti-Asthma Drug Rejuvenate the Brain? montelukast

Your doctor should be vastly interested in how this can be applied to stroke survivors. But don't worry this will never be followed up on because we have NO stroke strategy or stroke leadership in any part of stroke and this will fall thru the cracks. Our fucking failures of stroke associations once again will lead the way to failure by not doing anything about this.

Can An Anti-Asthma Drug Rejuvenate the Brain?

A couple of paragraphs from there.

This group of researchers from Austria, Germany, Italy and Croatia presented a new therapy that, according to their own words, can “functionally rejuvenate the aged but otherwise healthy brain”. And the therapeutic agent is probably surprising: it’s an anti-asthmatic drug named montelukast.
The authors had previously identified a molecule involved in asthma pathology as being elevated in ageing, contributing to neuroinflammation and cognitive impairment. This led them to the hypothesis that other mechanisms originally related to peripheral inflammatory conditions such as asthma might affect the central nervous system, potentially contributing to degenerative processes.
Leukotrienes are a group of molecules that mediate inflammatory reactions associated with increased vascular permeability. Increased levels of leukotrienes have been reported in a number of neurological conditions, as well as in the aged brain. Although their role is mostly unclear, it is believed that they may mediate inflammatory responses in the brain and blood vessels. The drug they used, montelukast, acts by blocking leukotriene activity, being highly successful in asthma.
According to their data, montelukast seems to be able to reduce the levels of inflammatory molecules in the brain, restore the blood-brain barrier’s integrity and increase neurogenesis in the brain of aged rats. As a consequence, montelukast treatment also restores cognitive function in the old animals.
Montelukast seems to be able to cross the blood-brain barrier and it had previously been shown to have a protective effects in animal models of neurodegenerative diseases, including Huntintgon’s and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as in induced loss of memory function, spinal cord and brain injuries and stroke, decreasing cognitive and structural deficits.
Here, they showed that this anti-asthma drug can reduce age-associated changes, improving learning and memory in old rats, reducing the inflammation-induced activation of glial cells in the brain, and restoring neurogenesis in the hippocampus of old rats most likely by targeting leukotriene actions in the brain.