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

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111–120 of 247 posts

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

#111
post #52

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

My understanding is France has a history of ignoring risks, including intentional spread of HIV to patients:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_blood_scandal_in_...

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

#112
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…

> w/ mice

Is this a special kind of mouse?

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

#114

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…

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

#115
post #112
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…

> w/ mice Is this a special kind of mouse?

Mice are a good animal model for a lot of the human physiology.

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

#116
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.

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...

We can't conclude that the donor had an egg allergy. The immune system is complicated as hell, it could be the case that he had some weird protein circulating on his blood that was recognized by her immune system, and by chance this protein was structurally close enough to some egg protein that now eggs trigger an immune response on her.

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

#117
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.

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

I am not a vegan, but I eat a lot of vegetables, most vegetables, if prepared correctly are delicious, there are a lot of traditional dishes in every cuisine in the world that take absolutely no animal products on their preparation and have a wonderful taste and aroma.

I see no reason to eat those franken-foods just because you're a vegan, a lot of them have strange additives to make them taste and look like animal stuff, it is simply not worth the risk to eat them IMHO.

Of course, this is a personal view point.

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

#118
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the boffins figured out somehow that if you get a blood transfusion from an Opossum you become immune to all snake venom for a while. (Seems wikipedia removed this factoid now... and other sources state "most" snake venom) I assume they tested on animals, not humans.

Can you provide a source? That sounds unlikely

Here is something scholarly:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5315628/

I cannot find anything now talking about a blood transfusion (I probably read about it 10 years back). It more or less jives with the scholarly article in that "immunogenic effects are reported".

A slightly less dry read:

https://www.grunge.com/1105496/how-an-opossum-could-be-the-r...

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

#119
post #7
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.

Not sure why scientists has to pin point a single cause where as you have different vectors that can cause the same disease is also plausible

I don't think scientists are necessarily assuming a single cause so much as that it's a moot point since we still haven't identified any causes for sure.

If some cases are caused by amyloid plaques and some aren't, for example, and we develop a treatment that cures the amyloid plaque cases but not the others, it will probably become extremely obvious that there are different causes at that point.

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

#120

I've often wondered if Alzheimer's is actually novel instances of prion disease. For instance, Kuru was developed within I think a handful of generations in a population of ~20,000 with limited opportunities for transmission (only transmitted when someone dies and their family eats their brain). If the base incidence rate for a novel prion is that high, can you explain Alzheimer's as just that? It would be sad news f…

it’s almost certainly not, or you would see epidemiological evidence for chains of transmission. prion diseases require contact transmission which is all but absent from the alzheimer’s story.

> it’s almost certainly not, or you would see epidemiological evidence for chains of transmission. prion diseases require contact transmission which is all but absent from the alzheimer’s story.

I think what the parent comment is saying is, what if it isn't transmitted, what if a prion is just occurring in the brains of the people who develop alzheimers?

That seems unlikely to me, but on the other hand, the article seems to be suggesting that transferring brain proteins from people with alzheimers to people who are younger will cause them to develop alzheimers which would be roughly consistent with that.

I don't know whether that would be possible, but, for example, what if there was somehow a specific protein in the brain that could easily be misfolded to become a prion, and the eventually if people live long enough they tend to produce that prion at least once, so it occurs essentially as a result of old age, but it can theoretically also be transmitted in the manner described in the article?

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