In an article written by Paul Reaburn in "Discover Presents The Brain", Fall 2010 edition, lithium, a simple metal and oldest drug in psychiatry may just be the wonder drug for curing mental illness, including Alzheimer's. According to this article, "lithium has shown two remarkable powers in the brain of mentally ill: protecting neurons from damage and death, and alleviating existing damage by spurring new nerve cell growth."
Why then do we not have a pill of lithium that's prescribed for Alzheimer's patients? We've heard of Aricept and Namenda, but where is Lithium? Amazingly, it turns out that drug companies do not want to spend millions of dollars researching and investigating how to make lithium into an Alzheimer's drug because there's no profit in it. No one owns a patent for lithium. It is a very simple element and freely available to anyone. So if Pfizer or Merck spent millions of dollars researching and proving lithium's effectiveness for treating Alzheimer's, anybody can turn around and sell it.
So who will lead this research effort? Sadly, it seems the drug companies will not.
Why then do we not have a pill of lithium that's prescribed for Alzheimer's patients? We've heard of Aricept and Namenda, but where is Lithium? Amazingly, it turns out that drug companies do not want to spend millions of dollars researching and investigating how to make lithium into an Alzheimer's drug because there's no profit in it. No one owns a patent for lithium. It is a very simple element and freely available to anyone. So if Pfizer or Merck spent millions of dollars researching and proving lithium's effectiveness for treating Alzheimer's, anybody can turn around and sell it.
So who will lead this research effort? Sadly, it seems the drug companies will not.
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