Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by thanatosmin » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 12:41 PM UTC

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.

Definitely lots of exciting discoveries happen by accident--possibly most. But understanding what those discoveries actually are requires carefully designed experiments. In the absence of careful controls Occam's razor has to apply.

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

#122

Post by thanatosmin » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 12:44 PM UTC

pcwalton wrote: post #81

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…

I'm curious: how does something this obviously flawed get through peer review for Nature? (I believe you that this is bad science.) Edit: I answered my own question here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Reports (Summary: It's not Nature; it's a "megajournal" affiliated with it with apparently much lower editorial standards.)

It's hard to say--peer review isn't anything magical. Three experts read a paper and provide a recommendation to the journal editor. Ultimately, it's only the journal editor who decides whether to publish something. Unfortunately, the whole process is confidential, so in most of these cases it's not possible for most people to know what happened.

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

#123

Post by gus_massa » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:00 PM UTC

solofounder7 wrote: post #90

hamami wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you cannot just decontaminate your body, the human body relies on beneficial microorganisms to function. without them you'd die

Remarkably KI is gentle on the body while still doing a great job purifying water of the most common foul bacteria and fungus. This seems like it would make no sense until you stop to consider that idea that in earlier generations of man we ate on average a lot more marine plants than we do today (kelp in particular) which are rich in Potassium Iodide. People ate kelp because it was a "low hanging fruit" so to speak,…

Not everybody lived nearby a sea. My family is from the north west of Argentina (Jujuy). To reach the sea you have to travel a few hundred kilometers horizontally and more than one kilometer vertically, so bringing anything from the sea was very expensive.

Moreover, the iodine content of the food was very low and that's bad for your thyroid. The government mandate to add a small amount of KI to the table salt NaCl. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_deficiency

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

#124

Post by rwmj » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:09 PM UTC

Are there other internal diseases caused by fungus? Obviously there are fungal skin infections, but it sounds strange that a fungus would be able to live inside the body.

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

#125

Post by carbocation » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:57 PM UTC

If Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is caused by fungal infection, why have antifungals (often given for people with invasive fungal disease) never cured an AD patient? AD is common enough that many of these people will have received antifungals for e.g. esophageal thrush or even fungemia.

Regarding the research, the data presented here are not convincing without larger scale replication with better controls and more standardized assays.

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

#126

Post by protomyth » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 2:05 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #92

nonbel wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it fits right in with the plan to get rid of those pesky controls when testing painkillers too: "Drug companies have a problem: they are finding it ever harder to get painkillers through clinical trials. But this isn't necessarily because the drugs are getting worse. An extensive analysis of trial data1 has found that responses to sham treatments have become stronger over time, making it harder to prove a drug’…

Comparing old vs new is how it's done in cancer research. It's inhumane to prescribe placebo to someone in serious pain. You give them the old or the new, and they report how they felt. In this case, since there is no concept of old or new, it's an entirely new class of treatment. So you give the current best-practice treatment without anti-fungal, and you give the same with anti-fungal. Anyone in the study is agreei…

The place where I worked did a pretty good job at administering the studies. The cost was in all the sampling and shipping. When your study is doing 1,000 sample kits with 5 samples every week day for multiple years, its going to cost.

I am still a bit clueless with all the research we have done with Alzheimer's why we need another control group?

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

#127

Post by tim333 » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 2:09 PM UTC

I was thinking if this is real then there must have been past cases of people with Alzheimer’s having been given antifungals for other reasons and having gotten better. Googling randomly I came across one, sadly paywalled but from the abstract the guy had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's for three years, then they figured it was cryptococcal meningitis and gave antifungals and four months later he was normal.

The interpretation in the paper was it was a misdiagnosis rather than an Alzheimer's cure but you never know.

http://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-d...

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

#128

Post by pohl » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 2:10 PM UTC

carbocation wrote: post #125

If Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is caused by fungal infection, why have antifungals (often given for people with invasive fungal disease) never cured an AD patient? AD is common enough that many of these people will have received antifungals for e.g. esophageal thrush or even fungemia. Regarding the research, the data presented here are not convincing without larger scale replication with better controls and more standar…

Good question. Are anti fungal molecules small enough to cross the blood brain barrier easily?

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

#129

Post by coldtea » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

dynomight wrote: post #108

dynomight wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, just not in the actual history of science. Take the discovery of LSD for one.

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

#130

Post by coldtea » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 2:58 PM UTC

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...

>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 "not to dismissed"? It's the difference between life and death!