Low-dose Radiation to treat Alzheimer's Disease - A Case Report by Jerry Cuttler
Dr. Jerry Cuttler, one of the founding members of SARI (http://radiationeffects.org/) gave an engaging presentation at the Annual Conference of International Dose Response Society on the treatment of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) using low-dose radiation.
It was a Case Report on a patient that was in hospice with end-stage AD and was completely unresponsive. Her husband, Dr. Eugene Moore, became aware of literature suggesting possible treatment of AD using low-dose radiation. He contacted Jerry Cuttler for suggestion on how to use this method to treat his wife's AD. Jerry referred him to my publication entitled "Low Dose Radiation Adaptive Protection to Control Neurodegenerative Diseases" in which I gave arguments and evidence supporting the use of low-dose radiation for controlling diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Moore wanted to try the low-dose radiation treatment for his wife. After considerable efforts, he succeeded in providing her the treatment by way of a few CT scans during a 3-month period. The details are provided in the Case Report published recently in the journal Dose-Response. The patient showed significant improvement in her condition following the treatments.
Dr. Cuttler summarized his case for the use of CT scans to treat AD with the following points:
Low-dose CT scans are an accepted medical procedure for imaging the brain.
Although there may be an AD recovery setback from an occasional overdose, there is no evidence of lasting harm from low-dose, periodic CT scans to the brain.
AD is a very serious disease that should be treated as soon as it is detected.
It is unethical to refuse this treatment to a patient/caregiver who requests it due to concerns about hypothetical risks (cancer?).
Treatment of AD patients should be started now, even though every patient may not benefit significantly from the treatment.
Clinical trials should be properly designed and carried out in parallel with the AD treatments.
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Congratulations to Dr. Cuttler on his pioneering work, his publication, and his presentation of the Case Report on the treatment of Alzheimer's disease using low-dose radiation. There was a lot of discussion following his presentation on how to move this concept forward. Let us hope clinical trials for the use of low-dose radiation to treat AD would be proposed, approved, and conducted soon. I am hopeful that such clinical trials would validate the concept and the use of low-dose radiation to prevent and treat AD would become the norm in the near future.
Congratulations also to Dr. Eugene Moore for being persistent and innovative, and succeeding in his efforts to obtain low-dose radiation treatments to his wife for treating her Alzheimer's disease.
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The idea that low-dose radiation may be useful to reduce Alzheimer's disease was proposed in 1999 by Kojima. The main reason low-dose radiation has not been tested in clinical trials so far is the fear of even the lowest levels of radiation based on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model which is presently accepted and used worldwide. If we had tested low-dose radiation for treating/preventing AD soon after it was proposed in 1999, we would have likely observed its effectiveness in controlling AD, and its use would have become widespread by now, reducing the toll of the disease. The main culprit dissuading such use of low-dose radiation is the LNT model. It is thus important to eliminate the use of the LNT model so that low-dose radiation can be studied and used without any concerns for the prevention and treatment of diseases such as AD.
