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Alzheimer’s cases tied to no-longer-used medical procedure

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Re: Alzheimer’s cases tied to no-longer-used medical procedure

#21

Post by skissane »

jollyllama wrote: post #15

Why isn't the procedure used anymore, since they stopped using it before this was discovered?

We worked out to produce these hormones (or equivalent compounds) synthetically, so we no longer need to extract them from the brains of deceased humans, a procedure which risks transmitting disease.

Not just human growth hormone, also other hormones used to be derived this way, e.g. those used to induce ovulation in fertility treatment.

I know someone who received cadaver-derived fertility hormones in the 1980s. She has a small risk of developing CJD and dying from it. It hasn't happened yet, and probably never will, but no one can say for sure if she is infected. If you don't develop symptoms (some people are infected but never progress, others suddenly develop symptoms one day after decades of being asymptomatic), the only way to know for sure if you had it is at autopsy, through destructive testing of brain tissues.

Re: Alzheimer’s cases tied to no-longer-used medical procedure

#22

Post by CommanderData »

aurizon wrote: post #10

New prion diseases are being found in other animals and might evolve to enter humans. There is a deer version being watched - not yet found in people, AFAWK? https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/index.html There have been many cases of assorted Human Papilloma viruses (HPV) transmitted by kissing as well as assorted variances of oral sex. Recent vaccines are very effective. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/public/index…

Do you mean HSV? I have seen articles implicating that virus but it's the first time I've heard of a HPV association.

Re: Alzheimer’s cases tied to no-longer-used medical procedure

#23

Post by munificent »

jollyllama wrote: post #15

Why isn't the procedure used anymore, since they stopped using it before this was discovered?

Second paragraph of the article:

>In the interim, scientists had discovered that that type of hormone treatment they got could unwittingly transfer bits of protein into recipients’ brains. In some cases, it had induced a fatal brain disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD — a finding that led to the banning of the procedure 40 years ago.

In other words, it gave people mad cow disease.

Re: Alzheimer’s cases tied to no-longer-used medical procedure

#24

Post by Reubend »

genman wrote: post #11

So is this small bit of information any use for figuring out the general case?

Yes, definitely. It hints to the root cause being "very similar in many respects to what happens in the human prion diseases like CJD, with the propagation of these abnormal aggregates of misfolded proteins and misshapen proteins."

So while this might be unrelated to the general cases, it's still a promising area of investigation.

Re: Alzheimer’s cases tied to no-longer-used medical procedure

#26

Post by diob »

bjourne wrote: post #8

Afaict, this is not an entirely new finding. For example, this page ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07771-6 ) references a 2018 article about the issue of Alzheimer's being transmitted (or rather "seeded") through growth hormone extracted from cadavers. Perhaps the new article provides additional evidence or perhaps the other article only suspected a casual link and this one proves that there is one. I h…

It mentions brain proteins contaminating it, makes me think of prions.

Re: Alzheimer’s cases tied to no-longer-used medical procedure

#27

Post by echelon »

boringuser2 wrote: post #25

I actually don't believe this conclusion based off the fact that it would be slam-dunk evidence for the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's, which we don't have.

Multiple pathways could lead to the disease.

It's entirely possible that a metabolic dysfunction or viral origin causes immune dysfunction and the downstream dysregulation, misfolding, amyloid/tau signals, etc.

There might be multiple entry points to causing this disease.

Re: Alzheimer’s cases tied to no-longer-used medical procedure

#28

Post by boringuser2 »

echelon wrote: post #27
boringuser2 wrote: post #25

I actually don't believe this conclusion based off the fact that it would be slam-dunk evidence for the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's, which we don't have.

Multiple pathways could lead to the disease. It's entirely possible that a metabolic dysfunction or viral origin causes immune dysfunction and the downstream dysregulation, misfolding, amyloid/tau signals, etc. There might be multiple entry points to causing this disease.

That might be true, but I don't think this makes the conclusion any more compelling because it now fails Occam's razor.

Chances are greater the conclusion is simply incorrect.

Re: Alzheimer’s cases tied to no-longer-used medical procedure

#29

Post by echelon »

boringuser2 wrote: post #28
echelon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple pathways could lead to the disease. It's entirely possible that a metabolic dysfunction or viral origin causes immune dysfunction and the downstream dysregulation, misfolding, amyloid/tau signals, etc. There might be multiple entry points to causing this disease.

That might be true, but I don't think this makes the conclusion any more compelling because it now fails Occam's razor. Chances are greater the conclusion is simply incorrect.

> it now fails Occam's razor.

I mean, mechanistically speaking, so does cancer. I don't think that's quite the lens to apply to biological systems.

Biology is wildly complex and subverts expectations all the time.

Re: Alzheimer’s cases tied to no-longer-used medical procedure

#30

Post by kibibu »

Mistletoe wrote: post #5
rajup wrote: post #4

My understanding was the beta-amyloid hypothesis itself is under some amount of scrutiny and may not truly explain Alzheimer's. Wonder if this finding adds more evidence for the amyloid hypothesis.

I thought CJD was caused by a prion. Was it in the growth hormone prep from the cadavers?

From the article:

> In the interim, scientists had discovered that that type of hormone treatment they got could unwittingly transfer bits of protein into recipients’ brains. In some cases, it had induced a fatal brain disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD — a finding that led to the banning of the procedure 40 years ago.

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