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Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease

nature.com

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Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease

#101

Post by manarth »

solofounder7 wrote: post #84
et2o wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's known to be pretty difficult to treat a lot of fungal infections in the CNS. The agents we have are pretty nasty, with severe side effects.

I'm a hacker not a doctor but I've done some research into water purification, and here is what I've learned: The body is mostly water. The task of removing microorganisms and fungus from water has been well studied. Science knows of effective agents which are proven to purify water of micro-organisms like bacteria and also fungus. Some of these are being utilized in public water decontamination, and others while als…

This argument seems to be that "The body is mostly water. The task of removing X from water has been well studied. Therefore it's easy to remove X from the body". This seems to be a logical fallacy.

Let me rephrase this argument as: "The body is mostly water. The task of removing HIV from water has been well studied. Therefore it's easy to remove HIV from the body".

Just to be clear: I have no medical expertise, this is mere conjecture. But fungal infections could perhaps persist in various cells. In neurons. In spoor form. In all sorts of manifestations, where they wouldn't be affected by the same treatment that disinfects water. I don't have any expertise to say one way or the other, but I suspect that if there were a simple solution such as "just treat with Iodine, it'll kill the fungus", this discussion wouldn't be taking place.

Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease

#102

Post by Nano2rad »

chetanahuja wrote: post #37
Uptrenda wrote: post #23

It's hard not to exaggerate the implications of this study if fungal infection does turn out to be the cause of AD given how huge this would be for humanity. Just off the top of my head I can say this disease has effected my family (1 set of grandparents effected by this disease so far) so I'd like for the conclusion to be correct. I guess the next step would be testing the hypothesis with more people with AD to see…

The discovery, if corroborated by others, could indeed be huge but I'm afraid it wouldn't open up new treatment options anytime soon. Fungal infections inside the body are really really hard to treat in the first place. Add to that the blood-brain barrier which makes it very hard to treat any type of infection in the brain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%E2%80%93brain_barrier#Fu... Combination of these two facto…

There is no need for drugs to cross blood-brain barrier. If antifungal treatment is effective, drugs can be delivered directly to brain although that may need new series of research.

Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease

#103

Post by andrewtian »

chetanahuja wrote: post #37
Uptrenda wrote: post #23

It's hard not to exaggerate the implications of this study if fungal infection does turn out to be the cause of AD given how huge this would be for humanity. Just off the top of my head I can say this disease has effected my family (1 set of grandparents effected by this disease so far) so I'd like for the conclusion to be correct. I guess the next step would be testing the hypothesis with more people with AD to see…

The discovery, if corroborated by others, could indeed be huge but I'm afraid it wouldn't open up new treatment options anytime soon. Fungal infections inside the body are really really hard to treat in the first place. Add to that the blood-brain barrier which makes it very hard to treat any type of infection in the brain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%E2%80%93brain_barrier#Fu... Combination of these two facto…

Coconut oil seems to have benefits in Alzheimer's patients [1]. It also has anti-fungal properties. Worth a look.

[1] http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_alternative_treatments...

Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease

#104

Post by TeMPOraL »

nonbel wrote: post #83

Nature is not a good scientific journal. The good info will be found in highly specialized journals. The amount of BS in scientific journals is related to prestige like this: x=seq(0,1,by=.01); plot(x,dbeta(x,.5,.5), xlab="Prestige", ylab="BS")

For those without a R interpreter handy, Emacs to the rescue:

       ^
       |  |                                                                           |  
       |  |                                                                           |  
       |  |                                                                           |  
       |  |                                                                           |  
       |  \                                                                           /  
       |   |                                                                         |   
       |   \                                                                         /   
       |    |                                                                       |    
       |    \                                                                       /    
       |     \                                                                     /     
       |      \                                                                   /      
    B  |       \                                                                 /       
    S  |        \                                                               /        
       |         -\                                                           /-         
       |           \                                                         /           
       |            -\                                                     /-            
       |              -\                                                 /-              
       |                --\                                           /--                
       |                   --\                                     /--                   
       |                      ---\                             /---                      
       |                          -----\                 /-----                          
       |                                -----------------                                
       |                                                                                 
       +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
                                            Prestige
(Also an on-line R interpreter: http://www.r-fiddle.org/.)

Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease

#105

Post by tim333 »

fernly wrote: post #89
tim333 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>clamouring of families trying to get their hands on anti-fungal drugs in the future in the hope that it helps their loved ones but we simply won't know if this will help until there's more data. It may not be so hard to get data - try anti-fungals and see if the patients get better. There are plenty of patients and the drugs could be tried in countries other than the US. It could be possible to get data in a few wee…

> try anti-fungals and see if the patients get better I got the impression that the disease symptoms result not from the mere presence of the fungus, but from progressive damage over a long time. So, if you don't start to treat until there are symptoms, you could kill the fungus and at best, the person would not get worse. Which is not to be dismissed, but...

It's hard to know till you try it but the experiment seems easy to do and reasonably low risk - the risk from anti-fungals is probably less of a worry than dying from Alzheimer's. So it seems worth giving it a shot even if the probabilities of success are low. The nervous system seems to have some recovery abilities, more from retraining surviving neurons than growing new ones.

Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease

#106

Post by mirimir »

captainill wrote: post #93

If you've ever taken antibiotics for an extended period and ended up with a fungal infection due to the loss commensal bacteria this is pretty intriguing. There is a lot of new literature proposing links between gut disruption and neurodegenerative disease.

Maybe antibiotics cause Alzheimer's.

Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease

#107

Post by dynomight »

thanatosmin wrote: post #75

As a biomedical researcher, I'm confident in calling this sloppy science. There is no quantitation of staining differences across multiple fields (to demonstrate that the images aren't hand picked), no controls with the PCR study (or even showing the results besides one in the supplement), and no demonstration that the antibodies don't bind to amyloid. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this wou…

This may be sloppy science, but sometimes discoveries happen in very sloppy and unpredictable ways.

Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease

#108

Post by dynomight »

dynomight wrote: post #107
thanatosmin wrote: post #75

As a biomedical researcher, I'm confident in calling this sloppy science. There is no quantitation of staining differences across multiple fields (to demonstrate that the images aren't hand picked), no controls with the PCR study (or even showing the results besides one in the supplement), and no demonstration that the antibodies don't bind to amyloid. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this wou…

This may be sloppy science, but sometimes discoveries happen in very sloppy and unpredictable ways.

Excuse me. Science only happens in precise and predictable ways.

Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease

#109

Post by DanBC »

nickff wrote: post #43
low_battery wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that was in 1982.

Are you implying that doctors have become more accepting of theories which challenge the status quo? Do you have any reason to believe things have gotten better? Doctors still seem to prescribe blood pressure medication and low-salt diets to people with hypertension, depite the overwhelming number of studies which show that neither prescription has any impact on mortality rates. It doesn't look like they are particul…

Your single link talks about mild hypertension, and says that interventions may not make any difference to health outcomes.

But you can look at what guidance for doctors is to compare what happens. Here's UK guidance.

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg127/chapter/Key-prioritie...

Offer drugs to people with stage one but only if there are other symptoms; offer drugs to anyone with stage two (but do careful measuring to ensure they actually have stage two); investigate causes and provide support.

It's pretty frustrating that you misrepresent the research, and what doctors do with that research, to push some anti-doctor spin.

There's plenty of bad stuff that doctors actually do.

Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease

#110

Post by kibibu »

manarth wrote: post #101
solofounder7 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a hacker not a doctor but I've done some research into water purification, and here is what I've learned: The body is mostly water. The task of removing microorganisms and fungus from water has been well studied. Science knows of effective agents which are proven to purify water of micro-organisms like bacteria and also fungus. Some of these are being utilized in public water decontamination, and others while als…

This argument seems to be that "The body is mostly water. The task of removing X from water has been well studied. Therefore it's easy to remove X from the body". This seems to be a logical fallacy. Let me rephrase this argument as: "The body is mostly water. The task of removing HIV from water has been well studied. Therefore it's easy to remove HIV from the body". Just to be clear: I have no medical expertise, this…

A quick injection of Easy Off Bam! Mould Killer should fix 'em right up.
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