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What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

quantamagazine.org

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Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#51

Post by ebiester »

mongol wrote: post #40
pvaldes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is one of the five or six big medical problems of our time.

You are probably right. How would a list look like? In no particular order, perhaps: Cancer ALS Alzheimer Diabetes Covid AIDS ?

Heart Disease, Cancer, Stroke, Alzheimer's, and Diabetes would be an easy top 5. Covid was the third leading cause of death last year, and considering the effects on some, it likely deserves more work as well.

source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#52

Post by kyaghmour »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #44
eirikurh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "A report in the July 2020 issue of The Lancet listed the variety of known risk factors for dementia, ranging from air pollution to repetitive head trauma to systemic infections." The article doesn't mention diabetes or sugar.

There’s a strong correlation between Alzheimer’s disease and high blood sugar levels. https://www.alz.org/media/Documents/alzheimers-dementia-diab...

Wow. Thx for this. Greatly appreciated.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#53

Post by LinuxBender »

tiffanyh wrote: post #26
kyaghmour wrote: post #12

As someone who has a close relative diagnosed with this disease, I'm always on the lookout for new information. So this is interesting. One area I'm particularly interested in is the correlation to diabetes. It's a factor that I found being mentioned here and there in some references. In the immediate case that interests me, there's a 20+ year history of type 2 diabetes and a recent scan showed severe bilateral hypoc…

> One area I'm particularly interested in is the correlation to diabetes. Sugar. I think the correlation is more so to sugar. I too had a loved one with Alzheimer’s, and there was definitely strong reason to believe sugar was a contributing factor.

I think the correlation is more so to sugar.

I believe there are quite a few scientists that agree with you. Some are trying to rename Alzheimer's to Type-3 diabetes. There are some articles sprinkled throughout nih.gov PubMed on this topic.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#54

Post by kens »

torben-friis wrote: post #29

Has anyone noticed that Alzheimer’s research tend to hit the front page much more than other medical news? I’ve been wondering why for a while.

Yes, I've noticed that Alzheimer's seems to be unusually popular on HN. I think much of it is the appealing narrative of those silly scientists and their amyloid hypothesis when the cause is obviously (pick one) sugar/inflammation/herpes/aluminum/tau/bacteria/immune/etc.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#55

Post by DoreenMichele »

kyaghmour wrote: post #52
DoreenMichele wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a strong correlation between Alzheimer’s disease and high blood sugar levels. https://www.alz.org/media/Documents/alzheimers-dementia-diab...

Wow. Thx for this. Greatly appreciated.

There's also a lot of research out there that links diabetes to inflammation. Inflammation can be due to diet (chemical derangement) or infection or both. Inflammation is implicated in a lot of brain issues as well.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#56

Post by uplifter »

eirikurh wrote: post #36
kyaghmour wrote: post #12

As someone who has a close relative diagnosed with this disease, I'm always on the lookout for new information. So this is interesting. One area I'm particularly interested in is the correlation to diabetes. It's a factor that I found being mentioned here and there in some references. In the immediate case that interests me, there's a 20+ year history of type 2 diabetes and a recent scan showed severe bilateral hypoc…

From the article: "A report in the July 2020 issue of The Lancet listed the variety of known risk factors for dementia, ranging from air pollution to repetitive head trauma to systemic infections." The article doesn't mention diabetes or sugar.

Actually, that 2020 report[0] does mention diabetes:

>Overall, a growing body of evidence supports the nine potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia modelled by the 2017 Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention, and care: less education, hypertension, hearing impairment, smoking, obesity, depression, physical inactivity, diabetes, and low social contact.

[0] Full report from July 2020 issue of The Lancet: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#57

Post by snshn »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #24
snshn wrote: post #16

could be prions from eating meat, could be genetic... it's likely similar to "what causes cancer?"

I wanted to argue against this, but the strongest interpretation of what your saying could hold up to reason. Perhaps there are some kinds of prions, or other, maybe similar, infectious agents, we haven't isolated yet.

I think it's extremely likely it's caused by something either unknown or previously considered to be safe for humans. Would be nice to study groups of people and see their rates of this illness. Multi-group elimination diet, with HTMA and blood and bone marrow tested for presence of metals, oxidants, etc.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#58

Post by manmal »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #46
manmal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disturbed sleep should IMO also be looked at - eg UARS and sleep apnea. You can sleep 8h every night and still feel crappy waking up. Maybe disturbed sleep is even worse than lack of sleep? I can feel better after 6h of good sleep than after 9h of disrupted sleep (eg when I know I‘ve been snoring, eg due to throat infection).

To my mind, they are both a form of sleep deprivation. I would say that sleeping poorly, no matter how long you lay there, still constitutes sleep deprivation . And as people get older, they tend to both sleep less and also sleep less deeply.

Maybe it’s worse than that. If eg a long term lack of REM sleep lead to Alzheimer‘s (it seems to create dementia patterns at least), and people with disturbed sleep get virtually none of that, then they might be worse off than someone with just 5h of sleep.

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#59

Post by kyaghmour »

uplifter wrote: post #56
eirikurh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "A report in the July 2020 issue of The Lancet listed the variety of known risk factors for dementia, ranging from air pollution to repetitive head trauma to systemic infections." The article doesn't mention diabetes or sugar.

Actually, that 2020 report[0] does mention diabetes: >Overall, a growing body of evidence supports the nine potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia modelled by the 2017 Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention, and care: less education, hypertension, hearing impairment, smoking, obesity, depression, physical inactivity, diabetes, and low social contact. [0] Full report from July 2020 issue of T…

Thx for this!

Re: What causes Alzheimer's? Scientists are rethinking the answer

#60

Post by DoreenMichele »

lalalandland wrote: post #50
DoreenMichele wrote: post #32

The brain "takes out the trash" when you sleep.* From what I have read, the accumulation of both amyloid beta and tau are linked to sleep deprivation. They may be markers of sleep deprivation and treating the sleep deprivation may be the best thing to do, though that probably won't get someone famous for some billion dollar drug discovery, so no one will likely pursue it. (Yes, I am aware that some of the research is…

I read a few years back about a new discovery of lymphatic system connecting to the brain. Small lymphatic veins help clean out these substances, especially during the night. One doctor cured his wife from MS using vein balloons like they use in heart conditions on these veins. I can't verify if this was real of fraudulent information.

The following titles fit with your remarks:

How a newly discovered body part changes our understanding of the brain (and the immune system) (2016)

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/how-a-newly-discover...

Edit: Ah, yes. I thought it sounded familiar: Previously discussed on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25426185

Brain’s lymphatic system, just recently discovered, now linked to aging and Alzheimer’s (2018)

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/research/brain-s-recently-disc...

Edit: Quote from the above linked piece:

“As you age, the fluid movement in your brain slows, sometimes to a pace that’s half of what it was when you were younger...We discovered that the proteins responsible for Alzheimer’s actually do get drained through these lymphatic vessels in the brain along with other cellular debris, so any decrease in flow is going to affect that protein build-up.”

Lymphatic Vessels Discovered in Central Nervous System (2015)

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lymphat...

Brain cleaning system uses lymphatic vessels (2017)

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/brain-c...

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