JACK WOOLLEY, of The Archers, is better than he was, now that he is taking treatment for Alzheimer’s disease — but he is still forgetting what are, by Ambridge standards, quite important engagements. One striking feature of prescribing an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor for those with early or moderate Alzheimer’s is how much better they feel once they start to take their white or yellow tablets.

In the series, Jack is so revived that he is reluctant to continue organising his retirement. His wife, who realises that the effects of treatment for Alzheimer’s are not everlasting, is doing her best to persuade him to unload some of his other responsibilities.

Whatever the state of Jack’s frontal lobes, it is a safe bet that the two hippocampuses that are tucked away under the middle of the brain, one on each side, are shrinking. The hippocampus atrophies with age and, as it is the area of the brain that processes and stores memory, the deterioration of these abilities is an inevitable accompaniment to growing old. In patients with Alzheimer’s the hippocampuses shrivel even faster than usual.

This feature of ageing is the basis of recent research from Japan, the results of which have been published in The American Journal of Psychiatry. In this study, 54 patients with Alzheimer’s were given Aricept and 93 control patients, also with Alzheimer’s, were left untreated. The people were matched so that their age, sex, educational background, the length of time they had had the disease and its severity when they started the trial, together with their apolipoprotein genotype, were similar. The annual rate of hippocampal atrophy in both groups was measured using an MRI scanner.

The loss of hippocampal volume among the treated patients was significantly less than it was in those who had received no treatment. This trial was the first to confirm the influence of Aricept on the rate of atrophy of the hippocampus for people with Alzheimer’s, and hence the probable progress of the disease.

In another study published in The Neurobiology of Disease (Cambridge University Press, £75), the influence of drugs on the biochemical changes in the brain that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s has also been demonstrated.

Few doctors prescribing the anti-Alzheimer’s drugs have failed to notice the Jack Woolley effect on their patients. They would agree with Professor Clive Ballard, the director of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, that this recent research “adds huge weight to the views of patients, carers, doctors and research workers who know that these drugs work. When considered with the enormous volume of clinical evidence, it would be scandalous if drugs that treat Alzheimer’ s were withdrawn from the NHS because of their cost”.

E-mail Dr Thomas Stuttaford your questions on Alzheimer’s