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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

#71

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

munificent wrote: post #23
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.

That's not to mention the zombies. There was a huge cover up.

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

#72

Post by teaearlgraycold »

axus wrote: post #38
eigenvalue wrote: post #35

I wonder what other stuff is being unwittingly transferred during standard blood transfusions. I've seen some interesting research about the "signalling" power of blood from both older and younger donors, with the "young blood" causing a slow down of senescence in cells, and the "old blood" causing a speed-up in senescence. Any time you take biological material out of other human beings and put them in a different bo…

My mom developed an allergy to eggs after a blood transfusion. She long regretted never being able to eat another chocolate eclair.

If your mom’s still around let her know about vegan egg alternatives!

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

#73

Post by kccqzy »

eigenvalue wrote: post #46
axus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom developed an allergy to eggs after a blood transfusion. She long regretted never being able to eat another chocolate eclair.

That’s nuts. Seems like researchers should look really closely at weird side effects of blood transfusions since these are effectively “natural experiments” that would be impossible or unethical to run normally.

Generally, I think if a patient needs blood transfusions there's a bigger and more immediate life-and-death problem right there. I think allergies would be preferable to death.

Is my understanding correct? I hope blood transfusion hasn't become a routine procedure these days.

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

#74

Post by withinboredom »

axus wrote: post #38
eigenvalue wrote: post #35

I wonder what other stuff is being unwittingly transferred during standard blood transfusions. I've seen some interesting research about the "signalling" power of blood from both older and younger donors, with the "young blood" causing a slow down of senescence in cells, and the "old blood" causing a speed-up in senescence. Any time you take biological material out of other human beings and put them in a different bo…

My mom developed an allergy to eggs after a blood transfusion. She long regretted never being able to eat another chocolate eclair.

You are supposed to declare your issues before (or at least after) you give blood. Kinda messed up that whoever donated that blood didn't report it. Then again, I'm glad the blood was available...

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

#75

Post by mike_d »

m-i-l wrote: post #6

Slightly more clickbaity title than the BBC's "Medicine stopped in 1980s linked to rare Alzheimer's cases"[0] which also says "The findings do not mean Alzheimer's is infectious - you cannot catch it from contact with people who have it... The researchers say all of the people in their study had been treated as a child with cadaver-derived human growth hormone, or c-hGH, that was contaminated with brain proteins that…

> "The findings do not mean Alzheimer's is infectious"

It may not be infectious like a cold or herpes, but it was amazing to me that it is transmissible. I spent some time Googling and it looks like the appropriate term is "Donor-Derived Infections."

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

#76

Post by the_optimist »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #69
jokoon wrote: post #52

weird that the bulk of patients are in france and UK, does that indicate diet?

All the researchers are all UK based, and the UK became verrrry interested in prion diseases due to a very bad habit UK agriculture had gotten into of incorporating culled animals (other cattle, which furthered the spread, but the ultimate cause was likely grinding up sheep infected with scrapies, an ovine spongiform encephalopathy) supplementary cattle feed for animals later eaten by humans which led to the CJD outb…

A compelling book on this topic:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Deadly-Feasts/Richard...

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

#77

Post by josu »

m-i-l wrote: post #6

Slightly more clickbaity title than the BBC's "Medicine stopped in 1980s linked to rare Alzheimer's cases"[0] which also says "The findings do not mean Alzheimer's is infectious - you cannot catch it from contact with people who have it... The researchers say all of the people in their study had been treated as a child with cadaver-derived human growth hormone, or c-hGH, that was contaminated with brain proteins that…

>The findings do not mean Alzheimer's is infectious - you cannot catch it from contact with people who have it.

Alzheimer's being an infectious disease is still being researched. The article does nothing to disprove it.

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

#78

Post by oli-g »

eek2121 wrote: post #67
caconym_ wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't find it clickbaity at all. The contents of the article were exactly what I expected based on the headline, and I didn't know this was possible. The really interesting thing here is that Alzheimer's seems to be transmissible from person to person via biological material. The BBC headline you quoted, "Medicine stopped in 1980s linked to rare Alzheimer's cases", totally buries the lede and is borderline mislead…

I didn't either, and I didn't even read the article. The headline was actually dead on factual for me.

For me as well, and I didn't even read the headline.

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

#80

Post by dimask »

caycep wrote: post #44

There is a line of research into the "transmissible' phenomena of a lot of these neurodegen dz. Epidemiologically, it's probably not infectious from one person to another bc we don't see spouses getting PD or AD often. But there's interesting phenomena - i.e. one of the Parkinson's stem cell implantation trials got a lot of press after the trial (which failed, didn't show benefit) bc after subjects passed several yea…

> we don't see spouses getting PD or AD often

Actually it may seem so [1], though still there is not any conclusive evidence to support a transmission hypothesis really as all this could be due to increased stress and such factors. Also, brain surgeons' increased risk of AD and more reports of associated risks with regard to contamination from brain operations [2] (similar to the article's ones) provide more indications that such a hypothesis is not completely implausible. Though also far from strongly supporting it or anything, as there is no proper experiment design with control groups etc to make better conclusions.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2945313/ [2] https://www.medicaldesignandoutsourcing.com/report-suggests-...

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