A Royal Bahamas Defence Force officer and another man were yesterday charged on several fraud-related offences after being accused of trying to defraud nearly $300,000 from Bank of The Bahamas last week.

A new Cleveland Clinic-led study has identified sildenafil – an FDA-approved therapy for erectile dysfunction (Viagra) and pulmonary hypertension (Revatio) – as a promising drug candidate to help prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease…a disease that is gradually increasing in The Bahamas.

According to findings published in Nature Aging, the research team, led by Feixiong Cheng, Ph.D., of Cleveland Clinic’s Genomic Medicine Institute, used computational methodology to screen and validate FDA-approved drugs as potential therapies for Alzheimer’s disease. Through a large-scale analysis of a database of more than 7 million patients, they determined that sildenafil is associated with 69% reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s disease, indicating the need for follow-up clinical trial testing of the drug’s efficacy in patients with the disease. The research was funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Without the development of effective new treatments, Alzheimer’s disease is set to impact 13.8 million Americans by 2050, underscoring the need for rapid development of prevention and treatment strategies. Drug repurposing – use of an existing drug for new therapeutic purposes – offers a practical alternative to the costly and time-consuming traditional drug discovery process.

“This paper is an example of a growing area of research in precision medicine where big data is key to connecting the dots between existing drugs and a complex disease like Alzheimer’s,” said Jean Yuan, M.D., Ph.D., program director of Translational Bioinformatics and Drug Development at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funded this research. “This is one of many efforts we are supporting to find existing drugs or available safe compounds for other conditions that would be good candidates for Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials.”

Dr. Cheng’s team has found that understanding subtypes (endophenotypes) of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease may help to reveal common underlying mechanisms and lead to discovery of actionable targets for drug repurposing.

The buildup of beta amyloid and tau proteins in the brain leads to amyloid plaques and tau neurofibrillary tangles – two hallmarks of Alzheimer’s-related brain changes. The amount and location of these proteins in the brain may help define endophenotypes.

“Recent studies show that the interplay between amyloid and tau is a greater contributor to Alzheimer’s than either by itself,” said Dr. Cheng. “Therefore, we hypothesized that drugs targeting the molecular network intersection of amyloid and tau endophenotypes should have the greatest potential for success.”

Using a large gene-mapping network, researchers integrated genetic and other biologic data to determine which of over 1,600 FDA-approved drugs could be an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. They pinpointed drugs that target both amyloid and tau as having higher scores compared to drugs that target just one or the other. “Sildenafil, which has been shown to significantly improve cognition and memory in preclinical models, presented as the best drug candidate,” said Dr. Cheng.

The research team utilized a large database of claims data of more than 7 million people in the U.S. to examine the relationship between sildenafil and Alzheimer’s disease outcomes by comparing sildenafil users to non-users. The analysis included patients using comparator drugs that either were in an active Alzheimer’s clinical trial (losartan or metformin) or were not yet reported as relevant to the disease (diltiazem or glimepiride).

They found that sildenafil users were 69% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than non-sildenafil users after 6 years of follow-up. Specifically, sildenafil had a 55% reduced risk of the disease compared to losartan, 63% compared to metformin, 65% compared to diltiazem and 64% compared to glimepiride.

“Notably, we found that sildenafil use reduced the likelihood of Alzheimer’s in individuals with coronary artery disease, hypertension and type 2 diabetes, all of which are comorbidities significantly associated with risk of the disease, as well as in those without,” added Dr. Cheng.

  To further explore sildenafil’s effect on Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers developed an Alzheimer’s patient-derived brain cell model using stem cells. In the model, they found that sildenafil increased brain cell growth and decreased hyperphosphorylation of tau proteins (a hallmark which leads to neurofibrillary tangles), offering biological insights into how sildenafil may influence disease-related brain changes.

“Because our findings only establish an association between sildenafil use and reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s disease, we are now planning a mechanistic trial and a phase II randomized clinical trial to test causality and confirm sildenafil’s clinical benefits for Alzheimer’s patients,” said Dr. Cheng. “We also foresee our approach being applied to other neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, to accelerate the drug discovery process.”

Jiansong Fang, Ph.D., a former research scholar in Dr. Cheng’s lab; Pengyue Zhang, Ph.D., an assistant research professor at Indiana University School of Medicine; Yadi Zhou, Ph.D., a data scientist in Dr. Cheng’s lab; and Chien-Wei Chiang, Ph.D., a research scientist at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, are co-first authors. Dr. Cheng presented the initial findings at the 2021 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference. The study was supported by NIA, NIH grants R01AG066707 and R01AG066707-01S1, and the Translational Therapeutics Core of the Cleveland Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

PEOPLE who knew Heavenly Terveus say the 21-year-old mother was terrorised and lived in fear in the last days of her life.

Catathesia Newton, Terveus’ long-time neighbour, claimed that on the Tuesday before her death, she finally built up the courage to ask for help from her alleged abuser. However, Ms Newton said by this time, it was too late.

It was claimed that on both the Monday and Tuesday before her death, she was the victim of hostility and confrontation from the man.

Days later on Saturday, the mother and photographer was murdered in front of her one-month-old son.

Ms Newton, alongside the victim’s sister Denise Terveus, and Tania Pierre, another neighbour, all believe that not only didn’t police take the situation seriously, but that had they intervened the young mother might have still been alive.

“From she was a little girl, I know her from she was about three, four and she never been a troublesome child,” Ms Newton said. “She always been quiet, humble, she lived her name. She was heavenly in all aspects. She wasn’t rude, she wasn’t arrogant and obnoxious, none of that.

“She was just humble and quiet. You wouldn’t even know she home and these last few weeks she was just different. She stayed locked in the house; she was afraid. She wouldn’t come out.

“On Tuesday when she reached out for help it was too late.”

Asked whether enough was done by police to help, both Ms Newton and Denise Terveus replied: “No.”

Ms Newton claimed the victim’s boyfriend - Fenron Ferguson - came to the house twice last week and caused a scene.

The victim’s boyfriend was also accused of a number of criminal offences last year but had been released on bail.

Denise Terveus said she was not aware he was released on bail.

“They let him out on bail. . .I wasn’t even contacted that he was even out so this whole situation could have been avoided had they done their jobs properly,” she said.

Denise said Heavenly was also engaged to be married.

She said the system had failed Heavenly and their family.

Ms Pierre added that the young photographer was tormented.

“She was her mom’s only child. She was sheltered up until she got into a relationship with him and he became her life. She cut off everyone. She was isolated so I’m just sad that the ending part of her life she was tormented greatly. She wasn’t at peace.”

The women all say they tried to help Heavenly through her situation, but it was to no avail.

“We tried,” Ms Newton said, “By telling him he can’t come around here no more (allegedly) threatening her and stuff.”

Ms Pierre added: “We notice the police didn’t take it as seriously as we did.”

Moving forward, the women said they want to lift up Heavenly’s name against much of the negativity on social media in recent days.

They also made an appeal for people in the community to do more when they view domestic violence.

Heavenly was found lying on the floor next to her son and boyfriend by relatives inside her parents’ home on Miami Street.

The man, who is suspected of shooting her before attempting to kill himself, was her boyfriend and said to be the father of her infant son.

Superintendent of Police Audley Peters told reporters on the scene Saturday that officers received information about the shooting shortly before 6pm.

He said upon arrival, officers were directed to a single-storey home where they discovered the bodies of a man and woman lying on the floor in one of the bedrooms.

EMS were called and later pronounced the woman dead. However, the man was taken to hospital and died of his injuries last night.

Their son, who was also in the room at the time of the incident, was taken to hospital, but has since been discharged.