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BusinessWeek
Armed with fresh medical insights, drug companies are redoubling their efforts to address the disease's complex causes
By Ellen Gibson
The Weakley family lives in Dover, Pa., about 30 miles south of Harrisburg. Their two-story house sits on a mostly treeless tract of land, across the road from a big white barn. Seated at the dining table, Beverly Morgart-Weakley is describing the recent changes she's seen in her 21-year-old daughter Jennifer. Once unable to form words, "she keeps saying 'mama', and she's starting to say the beginnings of other words. You'll hear something that almost sounds like a sentence and you can figure out what she's trying to tell you."
Every parent looks forward to these developmental milestones, but Beverly has been waiting two decades. In the early 1990s, Jennifer was diagnosed with autism, and her early childhood was dominated by doctor's visits. Things got worse in her teens. The girl would sometimes bite her own arms in paroxysms of frustration. Many times she grabbed her mother or her younger sister by the neck and squeezed hard. Even the family's collie was bitten.
Beverly was skeptical of medications, but she needed a way to quell her daughter's increasingly violent outbursts. Doctors tried the antipsychotic drug Risperdal, but Jennifer gained weight and grew sluggish. Then they turned to Zyprexa, a schizophrenia medication, but the symptoms persisted. Over the past year the family has had a modest breakthrough with Namenda, an Alzheimer's drug from Forest Laboratories (FRX). Jen's aggression has subsided and her communication skills have improved. "She is still far from normal," says Beverly, looking on as her daughter repeatedly opens and closes the refrigerator, then settles on the floor in the den and methodically removes every item from a filing cabinet. "But she's made progress, and that in itself is a miracle." ...
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