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Scientists discover links between Alzheimer's disease and gut microbiota

kcl.ac.uk

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Re: Scientists discover links between Alzheimer's disease and gut microbiota

#21

Post by reaperman »

noman-land wrote: post #18
mobilejdral wrote: post #2

I had to triple check the date because I was pretty sure that this was known before. Maybe it is simply the confirmation aspect of it? Edit: > Our findings reveal for the first time, that Alzheimer’s symptoms can be transferred to a healthy young organism via the gut microbiota, *confirming a causal role* of gut microbiota in Alzheimer’s disease ... From: https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/kimgreen/bio/glucocorticoids-a..…

"You could sum up Alzheimer's as: Diet/Lifestyle + a congenital form of Cushing's syndrome and you have increasing glucocorticoids which imply downregulation of the PVN, less progesterone and low levels of Prolactin reducing oligodendrocyte reducing myelin sheaths. Add in APOE e4 without choline in the diet and you have accumulation of lipids to round it all out." Can someone translate this into plain English?

I refuse to copy/paste ChatGPT but it breaks it down well enough to help you target specific slices of the statement to google yourself and do your own analysis of the accuracy of the claims.

This shouldn’t come across as “lmgtfy” and also nothing ChatGPT says can be taken as fact, but I do think it provided some helpful restructuring of the original.

I think its probably (mildly) overly pessimistic about some less-supported claims, and it may be worth reviewing the latest work on those claims first.

I personally feel that pregnenolone supplementation had a noticeably negative affect on my mental health. High prolactin would also be somewhat miserable but it makes slightly more sense that it could be better for alzheimer incidence rate. Drugs to lower prolactin, like cabergoline, have profound effects on the brain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33186046

ChatGPT log can be viewed here: https://chat.openai.com/share/e79afa6f-ee58-42a9-99c1-bd3a1a...

Re: Scientists discover links between Alzheimer's disease and gut microbiota

#22

Post by NeuroCoder »

Eumenes wrote: post #16

does this mean anal sex could theoretically transmit Alzheimer's?

It really depends on what you mean by that. In terms of this article, the gut biome would have to be changed by that. There are definitely different things people do in preparation for anal sex that could change that environment but I'm not sure how much anal sex itself actually changes that. This doesn't account for STDs that have been known to involve the nervous system for a long time already.

Re: Scientists discover links between Alzheimer's disease and gut microbiota

#23

Post by thenerdhead »

stevenwoo wrote: post #7
thenerdhead wrote: post #3

> For the first time, researchers have found that Alzheimer’s symptoms can be transferred to a healthy young organism via the gut microbiota, confirming its role in the disease. I just read “I Contain Multitudes” by Ed Yong where this topic was unsure as there’s only a handful confirmed links to things like depression, obesity, etc. Now it is confirmed for Alzheimer’s. This is extraordinary.

It's an interesting avenue, though a problem is that updates and interviews with Ed Yong post book appear to show they could only treat one thing - c diff effectively with fecal transplants and that is apparently temporary, with recent studies show it lasting possibly a year before another transplant is necessary, and that probiotics via food like yogurt/kefir cultures only last as long as you eat the food regularly,…

Great interview! This summarizes the book well:

> The microbiome is not a panacea for our health problems. It doesn't explain them all in their entirety. I think it just shows how important microbes are in our lives and what a strong influence they have.

I'm optimistic. With the current AI wave and being able to process datasets once impossible to do, we can at least come up with findings (that we may not understand) but may help us to understand these diseases and life conditions through the lens of trillions of microbes.

Re: Scientists discover links between Alzheimer's disease and gut microbiota

#24

Post by WanderPanda »

adamredwoods wrote: post #20
pajep wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those that are curious and not well verse in research level biology, what kind of food, drink and lifestyle will help maintain a gut biome that prevent Alzheimer

If diet had an effect on Alzheimer's, then those patients that have altered medical diets / starve at the end would show improvement, no?

I think this doesn‘t mean diet can prevent it altogether let alone revert it

Re: Scientists discover links between Alzheimer's disease and gut microbiota

#25

Post by cabaalis »

reaperman wrote: post #21
noman-land wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You could sum up Alzheimer's as: Diet/Lifestyle + a congenital form of Cushing's syndrome and you have increasing glucocorticoids which imply downregulation of the PVN, less progesterone and low levels of Prolactin reducing oligodendrocyte reducing myelin sheaths. Add in APOE e4 without choline in the diet and you have accumulation of lipids to round it all out." Can someone translate this into plain English?

I refuse to copy/paste ChatGPT but it breaks it down well enough to help you target specific slices of the statement to google yourself and do your own analysis of the accuracy of the claims. This shouldn’t come across as “lmgtfy” and also nothing ChatGPT says can be taken as fact, but I do think it provided some helpful restructuring of the original. I think its probably (mildly) overly pessimistic about some less-s…

Wow. When someone is so well versed in a topic that everyone else has to use the world's most popular and advanced artificial intelligence to understand what they have just said. Bravo.

Re: Scientists discover links between Alzheimer's disease and gut microbiota

#26

Post by WanderPanda »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #15
pajep wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those that are curious and not well verse in research level biology, what kind of food, drink and lifestyle will help maintain a gut biome that prevent Alzheimer

The usual. The way we evolved: Avoid processed foods and move (i.e., exercise). Obviously, only take antibiotics when absolutely necessary.

I should have discovered earlier in my life that prescribing antibiotics is the doctors equivalent of „you don‘t get fired for buying ibm“.

Re: Scientists discover links between Alzheimer's disease and gut microbiota

#27

Post by WanderPanda »

stevenwoo wrote: post #7
thenerdhead wrote: post #3

> For the first time, researchers have found that Alzheimer’s symptoms can be transferred to a healthy young organism via the gut microbiota, confirming its role in the disease. I just read “I Contain Multitudes” by Ed Yong where this topic was unsure as there’s only a handful confirmed links to things like depression, obesity, etc. Now it is confirmed for Alzheimer’s. This is extraordinary.

It's an interesting avenue, though a problem is that updates and interviews with Ed Yong post book appear to show they could only treat one thing - c diff effectively with fecal transplants and that is apparently temporary, with recent studies show it lasting possibly a year before another transplant is necessary, and that probiotics via food like yogurt/kefir cultures only last as long as you eat the food regularly,…

I know nothing about this but to me „highly processed“ seems like such a broad term that it seems unlikely that every form of processing is bad. Would be great if we could instead enumerated the handful worst offenders which would make it easier for people to see the causal relationship and adapt their behavior in a more fine-grained way

Re: Scientists discover links between Alzheimer's disease and gut microbiota

#29

Post by bagels »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #15
pajep wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those that are curious and not well verse in research level biology, what kind of food, drink and lifestyle will help maintain a gut biome that prevent Alzheimer

The usual. The way we evolved: Avoid processed foods and move (i.e., exercise). Obviously, only take antibiotics when absolutely necessary.

What does processed even mean?

Unless I run out in the field and bite a cow, that meat is going to be processed.

Likewise with potatoes, I'm going to be eating unpalatable starchy uncooked potatoes.

Re: Scientists discover links between Alzheimer's disease and gut microbiota

#30

Post by ChuckMcM »

lelanthran wrote: post #8
garba_dlm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except our bodies already kinda do that on their own how would killing species of gut biota would helpful? helpful for whom to accomplish what?? we're headed to a future in which you have to take special pills so that the food doesn't kill you. like the glysophate and GMOs but applied against ALL life, including humans. if this is too far fetched for you then I also hope we don't get there.

> except our bodies already kinda do that on their own > how would killing species of gut biota would helpful? helpful for whom to accomplish what?? OP wasn't talking about practical uses, he was talking about further experimentation in which the researchers narrow down exactly which gut bacteria has the effect. Something like a binary search, or a git bisect.

insert this.gif :-). One of the things that would be interesting would be to understand if a specific kind of bacteria in the gut was the cause or if it was a ratio of some sort. One could imagine an easy to use diagnostic test[1] that could help inform you if you needed to do something or not.

If this causality pans out (and it would if it was replicated several times) then this would go a long way to helping people figure out if they needed to do something to avoid "early onset Alzheimers" or even Alzheimers in general. An acquaintance had a fecal transplant (yeah it sounds yucky but it isn't really) which consisted of a course of broad spectrum anti-biotics followed by the introduction of a "non-Cdiff gut biome". It "cured" their issue completely and it hasn't returned.

[1] When the Microbiome project was a thing I submitted mine. The fecal test was pretty easy (if 'yucky' from a poopy sort of way).

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