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Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin

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Re: Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin

#131

Post by robrain »

agumonkey wrote: post #98
sowbug wrote: post #66

I was recently reading about a phenomenon called terminal lucidity, where a person suffering from mental decline such as Alzheimer's spontaneously improves, recognizing loved ones, retrieving memories, and being able to carry on conversations. It's called "terminal" because the person usually dies within hours or days. If this is a real phenomenon, then it's amazing to think that at least some of the people who suffe…

Same thing happens for other disease. Some kind of last honey moon period where your health improves and often followed by a catastrophic relapse. I'm nobody but it makes me feels there's an economic system issue, the body gradually degrades but has the ability one last time to inject a final wave of change to try restore a proper state but the resources are too short and so the attempt cannot sustain itself. I wonde…

My dad died of cancer(s) fifteen years ago. He spent his final month in bed at home, chatting with us and friends, knowing that he’d soon be gone, bed bound but sharp as a tack.

The day before he died, he climbed nimbly out of bed and did a little jig to show how spry he was.

Charming in its own way, although his lack of garments on his lower body (it made life easier as functions became less controlled) added a certain edginess to the event.

Re: Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin

#132

Post by 12_throw_away »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #130

How is this ethical? The ethics section of the summary simply asserts it was OK, but I don't see how this being done in a private practice excuses them from normal strictures. They say this wasn't an experimental protocol, nor research, so I guess they dosed grandma for shits and giggles? Ethics statement Ethical approval was not required for this single case report conducted in routine private clinical practice, in…

Not to comment on the overall ethical situation (dunno what constitutes informed consent for an alzheimer's patient in Brazil, presumably it involves some legal guardian), but this is a doctor reporting on an individual treatment of their patient. It is not a research study. Doctors have wide latitude in treating their own patients, they do not require board approval to do so.

Re: Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin

#133

Post by ifwinterco »

new-treatment wrote: post #88
Aurornis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that, but a lot has changed since then and psilocybin is not the only substance that has been studied which interacts with those receptors. Our ability to synthesize new compounds has also exploded since then. Drug companies are looking for the next blockbuster drug. They don’t need to use psilocybin. We can now use powerful computers to come up with countless variations of drugs that activate the recept…

Very notably Definium Therapeutics (Formerly MindMed) has synthesized an orally disintegrating LSD pill. Given almost zero historical toxicity, I think it is mostly stuck in some societal acceptance limbo for this class of meds. Strange if one sees how openly accepted THC/etc are

Acid is always orally active and tabs are tiny, it being hard to administer was never the issue

Re: Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin

#134

Post by dpark »

gchamonlive wrote: post #85
Teknomadix wrote: post #59

Highly editorialized title. "Transient multidomain functional improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin-containing mushroom administration: a case report" This is exactly that. A case report. This is not a successful treatment. Far short of that.

> We report the case of an octogenarian Japanese-American woman with a 10-year history of Alzheimer’s disease, including 5 years of marked hypofunction and predominantly monosyllabic speech. > The patient received 5 g of orally administered psilocybin-containing mushrooms > Approximately 19 h post-administration, spontaneous autobiographical speech emerged. Over subsequent days and weeks, functional improvements incl…

The title is misleading. “Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin” sounds like results from a broader study, not an anecdotal report.

There’s a reason the article includes “a case report” in the title.

Re: Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin

#135

Post by not_a_bot_4sho »

whimsicalism wrote: post #69
sowbug wrote: post #66

I was recently reading about a phenomenon called terminal lucidity, where a person suffering from mental decline such as Alzheimer's spontaneously improves, recognizing loved ones, retrieving memories, and being able to carry on conversations. It's called "terminal" because the person usually dies within hours or days. If this is a real phenomenon, then it's amazing to think that at least some of the people who suffe…

i’m skeptical how much of a real thing this is vs particularly type of appealing story to the human psyche

One of my grandparents had AD and became strangely lucid one day, a couple weeks before her death. It was like she finally woke from a years long fog.

I remember it vividly because I got to tell her I love her and she smiled and said it back to me. She seemed to understand me for the first time in years.

It was short lived but I'm very grateful for that single exchange it gave me.

Re: Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin

#136

Post by mschuster91 »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #130

How is this ethical? The ethics section of the summary simply asserts it was OK, but I don't see how this being done in a private practice excuses them from normal strictures. They say this wasn't an experimental protocol, nor research, so I guess they dosed grandma for shits and giggles? Ethics statement Ethical approval was not required for this single case report conducted in routine private clinical practice, in…

> They say this wasn't an experimental protocol, nor research, so I guess they dosed grandma for shits and giggles?

Medical doctors have a veeeeery wide leeway when it comes to the question of what they are allowed to do to patients. If nothing goes wrong or no one complains, pretty much everything goes - ethics reviews are only a thing for large-scale studies.

The exception tends to come from drug laws - in countries like Germany, for example, psilocybin is completely banned from manufacture, possession or prescription outside of highly regulated and specially permitted academic studies, but in countries with more relaxed attitudes, as a doctor you can do individual therapies as long as you find someone willing to pay for it.

In fact, that is a common issue with cancer and rare diseases. A bunch of therapies popular in that space run either with approved medication that gets used for another purpose or in higher/lower dosages (=off label treatment) or with completely new, untested and unapproved substances - that one was an issue here in Germany with a doctor inventing his own COVID vaccine, it ended up being dragged through the courts, with a recent acquittal [1] as the court considered this as an individual therapy.

[1] https://www.lto.de/recht/nachrichten/n/lg-luebeck-corona-imp...

Re: Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin

#137

Post by malfist »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #130

How is this ethical? The ethics section of the summary simply asserts it was OK, but I don't see how this being done in a private practice excuses them from normal strictures. They say this wasn't an experimental protocol, nor research, so I guess they dosed grandma for shits and giggles? Ethics statement Ethical approval was not required for this single case report conducted in routine private clinical practice, in…

> Written informed consent was obtained from the patient’s legal guardian

They didn't even get consent from the person being drugged. That is absolutely insane.

Re: Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin

#138

Post by mc32 »

turtlesdown11 wrote: post #25
mc32 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, if that turns out to work, that would alleviate lots of suffering for both the patient and her or his relatives and caretakers. This would be pretty amazing.

This is crackpot stuff - there's no scientific evidence of any of this, it's pure grifting. The individual cited above has a phd in educational psychology and runs a pseudoscience "institute"

That's quite unfortunate. The victims and relatives of the victims of this disease are looking for any sliver of hope to ease the horrible path it takes so people like this who give false hope are truly degenerate, despicable beings. Like the people who took advantage of Farrah Fawcett's condition.

Re: Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin

#139

Post by sva_ »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #34
sva_ wrote: post #6

> n=1 > pay to publish journal > no clear Alzheimers diagnosis ("[...] were considered clinically most compatible with advanced Alzheimer’s disease") > administration of a heroic dose of street-quality drugs vs. a controlled sample > no university or hospital affiliation? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, hence I remain skeptical

I think it’s funny to describe a drug as “street-quality” while using a slang term “heroic dose” in the same sentence.

I don't really see it, those things fit perfectly together? 5g dry mushrooms -> heroic dose.

Re: Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin

#140

Post by gchamonlive »

dpark wrote: post #134
gchamonlive wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We report the case of an octogenarian Japanese-American woman with a 10-year history of Alzheimer’s disease, including 5 years of marked hypofunction and predominantly monosyllabic speech. > The patient received 5 g of orally administered psilocybin-containing mushrooms > Approximately 19 h post-administration, spontaneous autobiographical speech emerged. Over subsequent days and weeks, functional improvements incl…

The title is misleading. “Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin” sounds like results from a broader study, not an anecdotal report. There’s a reason the article includes “a case report” in the title.

It might be inappropriate for the target audience because they might mistake the treatment for the protocol, but it's not trying to be misleading I think. In any case the title got editorialised which I think settles this.
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