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LSU Health New Orleans: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy improves Alzheimer’s

CityBusiness staff reports//January 24, 2019//

LSU Health New Orleans: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy improves Alzheimer’s

CityBusiness staff reports//January 24, 2019//

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An LSU Health New Orleans professor reports that hyperbaric oxygen therapy has shown improvement in brain metabolism in a patient with Alzheimer’s disease.

The report is published in the journal Medical Gas Research. Dr. Paul Harch, clinical professor and director of hyperbaric medicine at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, is one of the authors.

The authors said a 58-year-old woman diagnosed with the disease underwent 40 HBOT treatments, five days a week over 66 days. After 21 treatments, she reported increased energy and activity levels, better mood and ability to perform daily living activities and to work crossword puzzles. After 40 treatments, she reported increased memory and concentration, sleep, conversation, appetite, ability to use the computer, more good days than bad days, less anxiety and decreased disorientation and frustration. Tremor, deep knee bend, tandem gain and motor speed were also improved, a news release said.

“We demonstrated the largest improvement in brain metabolism of any therapy for Alzheimer’s disease,” Harch said. “HBOT in this patient may be the first treatment not only to halt, but temporarily reverse disease progression in Alzheimer’s disease.”

The first successful HBOT-treated case of Alzheimer’s disease was published in 2001. The present case report is the first patient in a series of 11 HBOT-treated patients with Alzheimer’s disease whose symptomatic improvement is documented with fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography.

“Our results suggest the possibility of treating Alzheimer’s disease long-term with HBOT and pharmacotherapy,” Harch said.

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