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Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

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Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#91

Post by subcosmos »

avip wrote: post #37
hluska wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term 'type 3 diabetes' has been around for at least a decade and has been written about in some of the most mainstream publications around. It's hardly a term that needs to be cited. If you were to use Google, you could find well cited articles like this. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769828/ Or, here's some more current research being done at the Mayo clinic. https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/di…

I've now googled it and learned it's a controversial term not embraced by the medical community. Thanks.

I'm in the medical community, and one of the largest Alzheimer's research centers. It's embraced by many.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#92

Post by quotemstr »

lostlogin wrote: post #83
quotemstr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One day soon, we'll probably be able to generate a hundred embryos, sequence their genomes, and just implant the ones that lack detectable genetic and chromosomal diseases. Same outcome, but without the ethical hurdles inhetent in choosing who gets to reproduce. Embryo selection will still be hugely controversial, of course, but we have to overcome any reflex to ban the technique. Human genetic engineering is a techn…

I was under the impression that this was already being done? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3306852/

Cool. We live in the future.

Unfortunately, based on some quick reading, the technique is regulated in many areas and used only in cases where some specific genetic disease is suspected. This artificial limitation is a disgrace.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#93

Post by ejstronge »

st26 wrote: post #84
ejstronge wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your approach might reduce the rates of these genetic illnesses, but it would not eradicate them, as most commmon genetic illnesses have a non-negligible rate of spontaneous occurrence.

Do we know if latent precursors combine, or is it really spontaneous/random?

Great question! I would wager that both occur.

Each disease will have slightly different genetics, but Huntington's disease provides a good example. There, we know that some individuals have a predisposition to developing the disease - this bias results from having over a certain threshold of repeating DNA bases in the Huntingtin gene.

Here's an accessible discussion of Huntington's and similar diseases: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175376/ .

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#94

Post by jessaustin »

quotemstr wrote: post #76
m_mueller wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that currently just a matter of legality and cost? You can already test for trisomy syndromes by sequencing a bit of the mother's blood around week 10 and isolating the embryo's chromosomes statistically - that probably takes a very fault tolerant kind of sequencing, but throw in an order of magnitude more money or a couple more years of cost reductions and you're there.

Right, but at ten weeks, all you can do is abort, which means it's only practical to screen for a few different genetic flaws this way, particularly if you expect some of them to be bad Mendelian inheritance and not some kind of rare structural flaw. Suppose you want to screen out four recessive traits and each one is inherited with probability 1/4, the probability of rolling a good combination is (3/4)^4 = ~30%. If…

You're still flushing all the other embryos down the drain. It doesn't seem as awful as lots of other shit that happens every day, but it's certainly sketchy enough that I wouldn't do it. Humans are not livestock.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#95

Post by downrightmike »

mattigames wrote: post #63
downrightmike wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most of human history, surviving childhood was 50/50. Growing old enough to see your kids start having kids of their own was also rare. When you have a short life span, later in life things aren't selected against. But never in our history have we had the tools and the knowledge that we have now. We will continue to understand and stop these diseases.

There is a lot of diseases that can't be cured and will not be cured; just like you can't separate two twins conjoined by the head there are many other things that can't be reversed; pretending every disease can be cured or will be cured is irrational and irresponsible, at least not with technology from this millennium.

We can 3d print ultrasounds now [1], so really the issue is how wide spread we can deploy the tech and what the mother wants. But in time we'll understand how conjoining happens and maybe prevent this example.

In 1918 doctors didn't know what a virus really was. It could just hijack a cell to reproduce. Measles were a much more real threat, so they focused on that. 18 months later between 3 and 6% of the world's population was dead.

The 21st century will see things we dream of. We can modify t-cells with crispr to attack childhood cancer. There's a HIV vaccine that was successful in human trials [2]. Have a little more hope.

[1] https://www.ge.com/reports/brazilian-doctor-3d-printing-baby... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-44738642

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#96

Post by jessaustin »

mattigames wrote: post #63
downrightmike wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most of human history, surviving childhood was 50/50. Growing old enough to see your kids start having kids of their own was also rare. When you have a short life span, later in life things aren't selected against. But never in our history have we had the tools and the knowledge that we have now. We will continue to understand and stop these diseases.

There is a lot of diseases that can't be cured and will not be cured; just like you can't separate two twins conjoined by the head there are many other things that can't be reversed; pretending every disease can be cured or will be cured is irrational and irresponsible, at least not with technology from this millennium.

Dude this is the third millennium, not the second.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#97

Post by equalunique »

melling wrote: post #22
hackandtrip wrote: post #14

Research is making really big step, we all hope for a cure of this and other plague that are ruining our lives. I often ask myself if the nature of the disease itself make it even worse: AIDS was the worst in its age, people went in streets asking for a cure, now we made huge steps, the same it's happening with cancer, but Alz make everything different: the sick can't make his voice heard, he has no knowledge of what…

Very little is spent on Alzheimer’s research compared to other diseases: https://www.aarp.org/health/brain-health/info-2015/alzheimer... I suppose if we made more of an effort now, we’d make considerable progress in 10-20 years.

Maybe a sign of positive change? I have noticed Alzheimers disease lately getting more attention from the US legislative body, via C-SPAN:

From March 23, 2018: https://www.c-span.org/video/?442595-4/washington-journal-dr...

From June 19, 2018: https://www.c-span.org/video/?447278-1/marcia-gay-harden-tes...

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#98

Post by equalunique »

creep wrote: post #29
fnord123 wrote: post #2

This topic is touched upon briefly in the excellent game / walking simulator "Firewatch".

Thank you, the trailer looks fantastic.

I don't work for Steam or the creators of Firewatch, but here's the link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/Firewatch/

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#99

Post by acangiano »

coldseattle wrote: post #80
acangiano wrote: post #8

Reading this will rightfully scare the bejeezus out of us. The question is, what can we do? Alzheimer is sometimes referred to as diabetes type 3. Cutting out sugar and eating a low carb diet is a good precaution. It likely wouldn't have helped Jo, but it might save quite a few of us from this scary outcome.

He only seemed slightly overweight. I think this is only to be considered when a patient is significantly overweight or obese. Dementia rates are certainly higher in the Obese population. In any event--this man had a confirmed genetic condition that was the definite cause of his dementia. He was going to get it, no matter what actions he took. While it may be true that some dementia in obese people may not have manif…

I literally said "It likely wouldn't have helped Jo" in my comment.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#100

Post by quotemstr »

st26 wrote: post #86
m_mueller wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that currently just a matter of legality and cost? You can already test for trisomy syndromes by sequencing a bit of the mother's blood around week 10 and isolating the embryo's chromosomes statistically - that probably takes a very fault tolerant kind of sequencing, but throw in an order of magnitude more money or a couple more years of cost reductions and you're there.

Not all sunshine & roses. Here's a dark factoid for you- my memory is a bit fuzzy on when you chose mother's blood vs amniotic fluid sample for the test, but at the time I learned about all this, the odds of taking the amniotic fluid sample causing spontaneous abortion, were higher than the odds of the fetus having the more common trisomy conditions. For any particular fetus, the test was more risky than the disease.

It doesn't follow that the test is useless: you're still minimizing the number of people with genetic abnormalities, even if you're causing some spontaneous abortions along the way.
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