A New Use for an Old Treatment: Radiation Therapy and Alzheimer's Disease

With the incidence of Alzheimer's disease anticipated to triple in the next few decades, it is critical to establish more successful novel treatments or preventive measures that reduce disease progression. Radiation therapy has not been previously used or considered as a potential treatment for AD pathologies and our observations provide intriguing data that merit further investigation. Although caution is warranted, overall the data support a beneficial effect of low-dose radiation treatment for AD pathologies in a widely used AD murine model. Radiation therapy is a well established and safe medical modality defined by decades of clinical application. Moreover, radiation therapy as a treatment approach for AD could be implemented quickly and inexpensively, given the prevalence of radiotherapy centers across the U.S. Additionally, the use of radiation therapy for AD is suitable to all patients with mild or severe AD symptoms. © 2016 by Radiation Research Society.