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Hyperbaric oxygen therapy reverses hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

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Re: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy reverses hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

#91

Another horrific failure of reviewers. 6 subjects!? Did anyone actually check the study they registered? https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02790541 Their actual clinical trial had 62 subjects and it had a control arm. The paper has only 6 subjects and no controls. If I run an experiment with 60 people, I can find evidence for anything (precognition, telekinesis, etc.) if I'm allowed to cherry pick 6 data points…

it sounds like you are assuming they collected more data than they reported, is there evidence of that? They preregistered to collect 60, but they couldve simply been unable to collect that many (eg COVID). If it was preregistered perhaps the journal were obligated to publish the results no matter the outcome. Some journals do this ostensibly to combat publication bias. I didn’t read the whole thing: are the authors…

I would absolutely be harsh on this. There might well be reasons why they didn't include the other 54- perhaps these were the only 6 to maintain cognitive function sufficiently to continue to receive the treatment, or even be alive!

This is why we analyse on an intention-to-treat basis rather than who actually received the treatment. The publication makes no such attempt to explain this potential source of bias.

Re: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy reverses hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume "the amyloid hypothesis" is the hypothesis that plaques cause Alzheimer's. That hypothesis is indeed dead. There are plenty of successful plaque treatments. Basically none of them are effective.

Is Wikipedia wrong? They say this: > Alzheimer's disease is believed to occur when abnormal amounts of amyloid beta, accumulating extracellularly as amyloid plaques, and tau proteins, accumulating intracellularly as neurofibrillary tangles, form in the brain affecting neuronal functioning and connectivity, resulting in a progressive loss of brain function.

It's not necessarily wrong, it's just unknown. There is no firm scientific consensus on that point.

Re: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy reverses hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume "the amyloid hypothesis" is the hypothesis that plaques cause Alzheimer's. That hypothesis is indeed dead. There are plenty of successful plaque treatments. Basically none of them are effective.

Is Wikipedia wrong? They say this: > Alzheimer's disease is believed to occur when abnormal amounts of amyloid beta, accumulating extracellularly as amyloid plaques, and tau proteins, accumulating intracellularly as neurofibrillary tangles, form in the brain affecting neuronal functioning and connectivity, resulting in a progressive loss of brain function.

Wikipedia is correct to say it's widely believed that plaques cause Alzheimer's, because the new evidence is still encountering resistance. The hallmark of science is falsification. We now have many drugs that remove amyloid plaques with few side effects. Removing plaques does not improve symptoms or halt progression [1, 2].

Furthermore, 60% people over 80 have these plaques but only 10% develop dementia [3].

Ergo, the hypothesis that plaques cause of Alzheimer's is pretty much falsified. More than likely they may be a biomarker of some kind that may be associated with cognitive decline of some sort.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30273552/

[2] https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/02/12/alzheimer...

[3] https://nutritionreview.org/2021/07/amyloid-plaques-are-cons...

Re: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy reverses hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

#94
post #42

I'm using 2.4ATA 90min back to back sessions to treat my covid induced brain fog, with great results. It's the first time in a year I can think clearly. Anyone with long covid should seriously look into this as a treatment, it has some solid science behind it and is very safe, albeit expensive. At this point I've tried 14 different drugs, not a single thing has moved the needle except this. More info here on it for l…

What’s the long-term plan? Is there a point where you wean off or is this a rest-of-your-life thing?

Too early to say how transient the effect is, it's very possible my symptoms return after a few weeks. There are conditions that HBOT can out right 'cure', the bends and carbon monoxide poisoning are the first to come to mind. So I don't think it's out of the question that it's effects can be permanent.

One of the causes of my symptoms will be straight up organ damage, and there's plenty of evidence HBOT speeds up the healing of tissue damage. So any progress in this area should be permanent.

Re: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy reverses hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

#95
post #39

I'm using 2.4ATA 90min back to back sessions to treat my covid induced brain fog, with great results. It's the first time in a year I can think clearly. Anyone with long covid should seriously look into this as a treatment, it has some solid science behind it and is very safe, albeit expensive. At this point I've tried 14 different drugs, not a single thing has moved the needle except this. More info here on it for l…

What do you mean by "back to back sessions"? How many sessions are we talking about here? What happens between one session and the next?

5 session of 90 minutes, then a 2 day break. Rinse and repeat. It's a navy diving protocol.

Re: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy reverses hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

#96

HBOT is a widely used 'alternative' treatment for other neurological conditions. It's controversial, in part because there are very good reasons that it can cause neurological damage. This study is NOT a reason for anyone to run out and get HBOT. Even if the effect is real (and I don't think the study has enough info to draw than conclusion), you would need much larger trials to balance benefits and side effects.

>It's controversial, in part because there are very good reasons that it can cause neurological damage

I'm currently using it to treat long covid brain fog, out of interest, what are these reasons?

Re: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy reverses hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

#97
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I skimmed the article for the pertinent table. Three observations: 1. There is no control group. Since people get better with cognitive tests with practice, we don’t know whether these improvements were due to the treatment or just the normal practice effect. (Though if I were a betting person, my money is on the latter.) 2. Cognitive tests are not noiseless. The same person may vary by a few points between repeated…

While a control group is essential to determine if the effect is really due to the treatment or to practice, if they did the mouse study first and expected a positive effect, then they might have felt pressure to only have a human treatment group in what looks like a pilot trial. Maybe their original proposal included a control group, but their institutional review board decided against it? I'm a little surprised the…

Yes control group is very important. This link might interest you https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/?fbclid=...

Re: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy reverses hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

#98
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also find it a bit hard to believe that going from 102±7 to 109±5 has a p<0.005. If I run a simple t-test, it says p-value (two-tailed) = 0.07.

It is a paired t-test as the test takers are the same individuals. This is confirmed in the statistical analysis section of the actual paper. Paired t-test have more statistical power because we don't correct for group variation (as they are the same group measured twice). Edit: One way to think about this is assuming the effects are random and symmetric then the probability of going up is 1/2. If all 6 participants…

You're right about the paired test (although I think there's an issue with the group variance). But your final calculation is for a sign test. For a t-test where every point shifts a very little bit (e.g. 0.01 stddev), p is larger, I think.

Re: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy reverses hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

#99

Another horrific failure of reviewers. 6 subjects!? Did anyone actually check the study they registered? https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02790541 Their actual clinical trial had 62 subjects and it had a control arm. The paper has only 6 subjects and no controls. If I run an experiment with 60 people, I can find evidence for anything (precognition, telekinesis, etc.) if I'm allowed to cherry pick 6 data points…

it sounds like you are assuming they collected more data than they reported, is there evidence of that? They preregistered to collect 60, but they couldve simply been unable to collect that many (eg COVID). If it was preregistered perhaps the journal were obligated to publish the results no matter the outcome. Some journals do this ostensibly to combat publication bias. I didn’t read the whole thing: are the authors…

What, in your mind, is the purpose of preregistration?

Re: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy reverses hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

#100
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Wikipedia wrong? They say this: > Alzheimer's disease is believed to occur when abnormal amounts of amyloid beta, accumulating extracellularly as amyloid plaques, and tau proteins, accumulating intracellularly as neurofibrillary tangles, form in the brain affecting neuronal functioning and connectivity, resulting in a progressive loss of brain function.

It's not necessarily wrong , it's just unknown. There is no firm scientific consensus on that point.

The person I responded to said that hypothesis was dead which is a stronger statement than no consensus.
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