Live data from Hacker News

Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

michaeljfox.org

111–120 of 196 posts

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#111
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I am not trolling. I don’t recommend engaging in a good-faith dialogue with someone by prefacing it with your belief that they are trolling. If you're basing your trust in ChatGPT on the claim that it is trained on Wikipedia, you might as well read Wikipedia instead because then you also see the sources for each claim, or the fact that certain claims are unsourced. ChatGPT will not let you know if a certain claim is…

I don't have trust for things, I build trust with other humans if earned, potentially dogs. Beyond that there's no reason to trust with objectivity and reason.

Digression aside, I would impress upon you I haven't claimed, nor do I believe what you're claiming I have. I am simply providing you with a slice of the larger original academic paper that provides great, rigorous, and peer-reviewed documentation of precisely what GPT is, and what it's trained on.

From this paper you'll perhaps gather an instinct that these folks working on this problem are widely aware of the extremely well-known concept of "open source knowledge" and were well considered in their application of pruning data to their needs.

I believe you'll perhaps further gather retrospective insight upon the idea that GPT is doing anything more than giving you a T9-predictive-autotext for the entirety of that dataset; meaning you can try to coax it into saying anything you want but if the p-values aren't right or the predictive potential of a given token "coming up next" isn't there, that's just.. how it goes.

It's data. It's not quite the tower of Babel, but we'll get there soon enough. Kind of like how all the fancy 3D video game rendering software that looks incredible these days is still just manipulating tuples and vectors with matrix calculations, stuff you could do on paper but why would you do that math to describe a picture when you could just draw it.

ChatGPT is just drawing the pictures (in this poorly chosen analogy), and giving us the cool graphics. The math is all pretty benign and based in the fundamentals of neural networks, not even the more fanciful CV and deeper trained NLP can get to.

Info-scientists, I wonder what the "rainbow table" of all language and ideas etc. that would be relevant to a latent language learning model would be... this is a wonder to me because I lack the sufficient knowledge and field expertise.

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#112

If anyone wants to help the cause, PPMI is a large scale study funded by the Michael J Fox Foundation to help find early biomarkers. Even if you have no history of Parkinson’s in your family, you can participate in the study which is primarily surveys. It's easy to participate, and can help find more early indications of a horrible disease. https://www.michaeljfox.org/ppmi-clinical-study

Unfortunately US and Canada residents only for now.

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#113
Had to start researching this when a family member was recently diagnosed.

Parkinson's has many forms and many causes. There's a big divide between Parkinson's _disease_ (idiopathic Parkinson's) and Parkinsonism from a variety of sources - stroke, drug-induced, and so on. There are also other conditions, like progressive supranuclear palsy, that are considered either to masquerade as Parkinsonism or to constitute another cause of Parkinsonism.

Recommended treatments differ by the root cause of the symptoms. Some of the treatments that are recommended for one form may be contraindicated for other forms, or for different stages. For example, the recommended dopamine agonists are also the primary cause of Parkinson's hallucinations, so you have to trade back some strength and mobility if those start.

Something like 80% of Parkinsonism derives from idiopathic Parkinson's Disease.

Overall, it feels like we're really just getting started on these conditions. For decades, it's been thought to be primarily a motor disorder, but it turns out that there are scads of cognitive symptoms that develop years earlier than motor symptoms.

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#114
post #62
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who actually thought that steroids help with an infection? Don't those usually make you more susceptible?

If most of the actual harm is being done by your immune system going into overdrive, then yeah, steroids can help. You'd want to simultaneously treat the infection, of course. "Multiple randomized trials indicate that systemic corticosteroid therapy improves clinical outcomes and reduces mortality in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 who require supplemental oxygen, presumably by mitigating the COVID-19-induced sys…

I can see that in some cases. I doubt that would be beneficial in the case of sepsis, right?

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#115

Interesting that big flu outbreaks cause a long term spike in Parkinson's - how much more will be traced back to the impact of viruses? Saw that come up as a worry around Covid, seems the loss of smell/taste is a commonality with Parkison. We will not know for a decade or two though, but these biomarkers might help accelerate measuring the impact.

I am currently struggling with the idea of going back to vaping, having quit 3 years ago following covid, because nicotine has consistently shown to be a strong drug for fending off parkinsons.

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#116
post #2

As I am now casually interested in the subject, what's a good resource to find out why this disease is hard to detect and cure and various other interesting facts?

This might be useless to you, but OMIM is the canonical database of genetic diseases, and has tons of information:

https://www.omim.org/entry/168600

https://www.omim.org/entry/168601

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#117
post #12

My grandmother had Parkinson's and it was awful. How long until I can go to the doctor, get some blood drawn, and see if I'll develop it one day?

What would you do if you found out you would? (I ask as someone whose great-grandfather, great-uncle, and grandfather all had Parkinson’s.) I’ve avoided any testing because, as far as I know, there’s nothing preventative to be done. I’d love to hear otherwise. I’ve broached the subject with my last two primary care physicians and both advised that there was no point in knowing.

Pick up a nicotine addiction.

Seriously, it has long been understood that people who smoke have dramatically lower levels of parkinsons. It comes from the neuroprotective properties of nicotine. You don't have to become a smoker, you could theoretically use any of the other forms (vape, gum, patch)

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#118
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is likely on the same level as horse dewormer for COVID You mean something that's demonstrated to have a statistically significant protective effect in a majority of studies but was attacked mercilessly by the pharma industry and the media they fund because they can't profit from a generic drug like that? https://c19ivm.org/meta.html

Looks great .. dive in (talk to your local professional epidemiologist) and it's a skewed collection of low N studies mixed in with studies in regions with large intestinal parasite issues. Does horse dewormer do anything significant for large populations in first world countries? No. ( Save for regions with a intestinal parasite problem ) Elsewhere it gets rid of a significant number of parasites, making people heal…

Ivermectin is a protease inhibitor, among other possible mechanisms. They developed Paxlovid to work in a similar way, but it seems to be not effective whatsoever.

Then you have Remdisiv, which definitely killed 10's of thousands of people, if not more. That's the real story of COVID, at least in the US. The countless people that were experimented on with one of the most dangerous drugs to be invented in recent times.

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you do if you found out you would? (I ask as someone whose great-grandfather, great-uncle, and grandfather all had Parkinson’s.) I’ve avoided any testing because, as far as I know, there’s nothing preventative to be done. I’d love to hear otherwise. I’ve broached the subject with my last two primary care physicians and both advised that there was no point in knowing.

If you know for certain, then you might do things you otherwise wouldn't. E.g decide to have children or not, plan a will. Live life to the max. Potentially get a head start on treatment if one were ultimately available, even if super experimental and maybe even not working in the end. Honestly, there are many reasons to know beforehand and not a lot of reasons to not know.

So if you gonna die anyways you won’t live life to the max? Probably better off not finding out and live life to the max without the thought of it

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you do if you found out you would? (I ask as someone whose great-grandfather, great-uncle, and grandfather all had Parkinson’s.) I’ve avoided any testing because, as far as I know, there’s nothing preventative to be done. I’d love to hear otherwise. I’ve broached the subject with my last two primary care physicians and both advised that there was no point in knowing.

Pick up a nicotine addiction. Seriously, it has long been understood that people who smoke have dramatically lower levels of parkinsons. It comes from the neuroprotective properties of nicotine. You don't have to become a smoker, you could theoretically use any of the other forms (vape, gum, patch)

https://www.apdaparkinson.org/article/smoking-and-parkinsons...

Smoking and Nicotine addiction are still bad.

Post reply on HN