U.S. Citizens in Cuba for New Breakthrough Alzheimer’s Treatment

A small but growing number of U.S. citizens are traveling to Havana for a breakthrough new treatment for Alzheimer’s, a disease that systematically destroys a person's memory, personality, and ability to function. 

Studies show that, unlike all other medications available for the disease, Cuba’s NeuralCIM not only stabilizes patients, in more than half of cases it reverses many of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Cuba approved the medication for use last year, following several years of medical trials.

Dr Bill Blanchet from Colorado has been accompanying his patients to Havana, and says the impact of NeuralCIM on many of them, in just six months, has been life-changing.

An upcoming Belly of the Beast documentary, ‘Teresita’s Dream’, tracks the research and development of NeuralCIM. It meets the Cuban scientists behind it, focusing on Dr Teresita Rodríguez, who was driven by her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s.

TRANSCRIPT

In the midst of an oil blockade, power cuts, and fuel shortages, a group of U.S. citizens have ignored warnings from politicians at home against traveling to Cuba.

They’re in Havana, accompanied by Colorado-based physician Dr Bill Blanchet, to receive a potentially revolutionary treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr Blanchet of Boulder Internal Medicine describes how the medication works in an interview with Belly of the Beast, “NeuralCIM, or NeuroEPO plus, is a medication that's derived from erythropoietin. Erythropoietin is a substance made by our kidneys that tells our bodies to make more red blood cells.

It's also produced by neurons in our brain, and when our brain is injured, the NeuroEPO helps the brain heal, stimulates production of brain growth factor, reduces inflammation in the brain, prolongs the life expectancy of old brain cells and actually induces production of new brain cells.”

Researched and developed by Cuba’s Center for Molecular Immunology, the drug has been through several years of trials, involving hundreds of patients.

The results have been staggering.

“The first trial they did with this particular drug is called the ATHENEA trial. You can actually find it on the NIH website in the U.S.,” explains Dr Blanchet.

Detailing the trial results, he says “At the end of the first year, 85% of the people on placebo had progression of their dementia. 54% of the people on treatment had improvement in their dementia and 30% were stable. So 84% had improvement or stability of their dementia. By the end of three years, everyone who was stable or improved at one year was still stable or improved at three years. That's incredible.”

With positive results, and no major side-effects observed in the trials, last year Cuba’s Ministry of Health approved the drug for patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s.

A small but growing number of U.S. citizens are now traveling to Havana for the treatment.

Among them is 86-year-old Russ Buckley.

“My wife was concerned about my word finding, and mathematical and, most importantly, personality deterioration,” Russ says.

He describes how things have changed in the six months since starting on NeuralCIM: “I have a happy wife because things have improved significantly. Primarily, my personality has gone back to its crazy original self. I still have some word-finding problems, but I spit it out, and it works. Before, I would call an apricot an asparagus or avocado, and never get to apricot.”

It’s usually friends and family of a patient that notice changes first.

Evaristo Ramírez Aguilar has flown in with the group to collect medication for his father-in-law.

Telling us what things were like before the treatment, Evaristo says, “He had become really quiet. And he was just sitting down without participating in the conversation, just being there.”

And now?

“He’s been on this medication for about six months. And he’s started asking me all kinds of technical questions, which didn't happen in the past. He’s started being himself again. He's enjoying, now, getting into the computer, searching things on Google and even looking at emails,” a smiling Evaristo says.

52 of Dr Blanchet’s Colorado patients are now being treated by La Pradera Medical Institute in Cuba and being given NeuralCIM.

He says he’s observed positive changes in many.

“These are patients who are being prescribed the drug in Cuba, but we are following them very closely. We do a Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). We also do an auditory evoked response (EEG) which measures speed and function of different activities in the brain. And what we're seeing is patients are improving on both of those metrics.”

Going on to give an example of a patient receiving the treatment, Dr Blanchet says, “She was at the point where she could not name her grandchildren. She could not tell me what day of the week it was, what month or what year it was. She could not tell me what she had for breakfast that morning.

Six months later, she's able to tell me what she had for breakfast. She's able to name her grandchildren, by children. She told me the day of the week, the day of the month.

I talked to her daughter and said, ‘So how's your mom doing?’ And the response was, ‘Oh my God, she's so good. She dances, she’s socializing, she’s her old self again.’”

Dr Blanchet adds, “I’m seeing with my own eyes, in my own clinic, ongoing improvement in these patients that is just inspiring.”

Staff from Dr Blanchet’s clinic in Colorado have also noticed the improvements.

“It’s been interesting to see the differences that the patients have been noticing themselves, but not only themselves, their family members that live with them on a daily basis. Being able to learn more about NeuralCIM and having access to that for our patients, and to see the data that it has been working, it's incredible,” says Medical Assistant Betsy Herrera.

Registered Nurse Peggy Ehrhart, who also works at Dr Blanchet’s clinic, says, “This has had such an impact on patients with dementia. Whereas the medications that we have in the United States are just kind of keeping patients stable, not improving their outcomes.”

In an emotional moment, reflecting on her own personal experience with Alzheimer’s, she adds, “I think everybody has had a family member who's been impacted by dementia, and how I wish that this had been available for my parents when they were still alive and to be able to see them benefit from this treatment.”

A soon to be released Belly of the Beast documentary, ‘Teresita’s Dream’, tracks the research and development of NeuralCIM. It meets the Cuban scientists behind it, focusing on Dr Teresita Rodríguez, driven by her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s.

“The enthusiasm in the clinic about this medicine, seeing patients get better, coming back to life, to talk about it without crying is almost difficult,” says Dr Blanchet, visibly moved by what he’s seen in Cuba.

“We have 7 million people in the United States who need to be on this medication,” he adds.

The drug is now also being studied as a possible treatment for traumatic brain injuries.

Speaking outside a hospital in Havana, Belly of the Beast correspondent Hassan Ghani reports, “Historically, this small island nation has punched far above its weight in the field of medicine. Its medical research is world class, partly driven by the need for self sufficiency in the face of U.S. sanctions, which prevent the import of medicine and equipment.

But Cuba's once renowned healthcare system, which used to boast the highest doctor-to-patient ratio in the world, is now struggling.”

On top of medication shortages, backup generators are straining under extended power cuts, and fuel is scarce.

Hospitals can now only perform urgent surgeries.

Dr Blanchet, who’s traveled to Cuba on numerous occasions, says, “Seeing how wonderful the people of Cuba are and seeing on a firsthand basis what our policy is doing to make these people's lives harder, to call it embarrassing doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“That's something that we did. I'm responsible for not having adequate incubators in hospitals so that babies get to die in a hospital because they can't get incubators because of the embargo, or can't plug those incubators in because they don't have energy. They can't get IV fluids for the frail elderly who come down with chikungunya or dengue. They could easily be resuscitated with fluids, and they don't always have them,” he tells us.

“It is so sad that we, the bright, shining city on the hill, is responsible for what we're doing in Cuba. That's tragic, beyond tragic.”

NeuralCIM patient Ralph Gregory, furious at the suffering around him, says, “The embargo and then the most recent, I don't even want to call them restrictions, are just cruel because they impact the people. And I don't understand why Cuba poses such a ‘threat’ to the United States that the government has to penalize the people.”

Fellow patient Russ Buckley adds, “What we, me and the United States, have done to Cuba, is criminal.”

Making the case for lifting the embargo and oil blockade on Cuba, Dr Blanchet asks, “What is this embargo accomplishing that's helping the United States? And then compare that to what the benefit would be to the United States if 600,000 Americans did not become disabled from dementia every year, and we saved $300 billion a year in health care costs.

Cuba is full of good people, and this drug is an amazing thing. Politics aside, humanity is what's at stake here.”