Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

michaeljfox.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 196 posts

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#181

Post by defrost »

sixQuarks wrote: post #88
defrost wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, it's also effective against a wider range of parasites, head lice, eyelash mites, and skin conditions. In the case of COVID in populations sans those conditions .. not so much.

In addition to head lice and eyelash mites, it might also be useful to point out it is the only drug to win a Nobel Prize for treatment of infectious diseases. Used by BILLIONS of people. May I remind you that you referred to this drug as a horse dewormer before you were called out. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34466270/

FWiW no drug has ever won a Nobel prize - researchers are awarded such prizes.

Specifically William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work developing a new drug, Avermectin.

From the actual press release from the actual Nobel Prize Committee [1]:

    which was subsequently chemically modified to a more effective compound called Ivermectin.

    Ivermectin was later tested in humans with parasitic infections and effectively killed parasite larvae (microfilaria).

    Collectively, Ōmura and Campbell’s contributions led to the discovery of a new class of drugs with extraordinary efficacy against parasitic diseases.
So, in actual fact NOT used for treatment of "infectious diseases" but for treatment specifically of parasitic diseases because it was developed to be a highly effective dewormer that kills roundworm parasites.

The Nobel Prize press release that you yourself cite (although apparently have never actually read) depicts Ivermectin as a Horse Dewormer (see figure 3) - it also deworms cattle, humans, pigs, etc.

As a highly effective dewormer it is obviously positively correlated with health improvements in any large population with significant parasites - killing parasite improves overall health, more food eaten available for the host, improved immune responses, etc.

Hence the reason for many global studies showing positive results following Ivermectin treatments.

Hence also the reason quacks in the US started pushing propaganda about supposed effectiveness against COVID, setting up smoke and mirror site such as the one linked above, and spreading sly not quite untruths such as the Nobel Prize one you've repeated.

Do please read the original 2015 press release in full.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20151005210425/http://www.nobelp...

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#182

Post by techdragon »

sokoloff wrote: post #157
techdragon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the lack of incentives to take the “huh that’s interesting, but I don’t know if I can trust it because it’s published in a quack journal” … and ever reproduce the research and get it into more trusted more prestigious journals. There’s a reproducibility crisis in many fields of research, and medical research has multiple confounding factors, the “no prestige in just redoing the research”, lack of money…

If you had a legitimate research finding, why would you publish it in a quack journal? Presumably, because the more prestigious journals declined to publish it. Why did all of them decline to publish it? There was probably a reason. A paper being published in a quack journal does actually carry a signal about the quality of paper, IMO. No one turns down publishing in Cell or Neuron to publish in Donald's Journal o' Q…

Yes, the point you’re making is valid and I generally speaking agree with it. The issue isn’t necessarily that it was published in a quack journal, it’s that now this idea has been published in a quack journal it’s “tainted” and suggesting that it be looked at again for any other reason than some significant new evidence discovered completely by accident (because you’re a quack too if you believed the idea in this paper) and it has to be pretty significant evidence too (otherwise it might look like you are cherry picking evidence for your quack belief) and only then can you consider the idea worth properly studying… all because by originally being published in a quack journal, the idea has the taint of quackery.

Now most quack research is not particularly useful… but it can be made more useful to society if it’s used properly, we should be more willing to publish reproductions and failures to reproduce existing research, and we should be encouraging early career scientists in all disciplines to take this kind of quack research and to prove it wrong, it’s all there to disprove, easy done. We would get more critical thinking in our research students we would get more evidence to disprove other quack research and every now and then we might even stumble onto something good that would have gone ignored as just quackery for an unknown period of time.

If we want to fix the reproduction crisis we can’t ignore the shit research papers and only reproduce the good ones we think might work, we need to be willing to look at research like this, which involves a pretty/relatively harmless high dose vitamin regimen that can be easily monitored by a clinician performing the research work (double blinds of course) and then we go from “idea that won’t be touched again and quacks try to convince people with flimsy research” to “idea conclusively proven or disproven and scientifically have settled the question without leaving reasonable doubts that can be used by quackery peddlers or others mis-using the scientific method for their own gain.

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#183

Post by eutectic »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #115
shadowtree wrote: post #25

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.

Seriously? You can't think of a more efficient use of the time and money?

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#184

Post by athoun »

georgeg23 wrote: post #179
alexpotato wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Twitter thread on the specifics of how dry cleaning retail stores contribute to the problem is an excellent quick overview: https://twitter.com/realEstateTrent/status/14378028033139220...

Seems sensationalist

It doesn't seem sensationalist to me. I looked up three different strip malls that I am familiar with and all of them have some kind of PCE cleanup sites from previous or current dry-cleaners.

Here's one example in Santa Clara of a dry cleaner that operated in the 60's and there has been an active remediation project to cleanup the groundwater that has been on-going to this day [1]. In this case a single dry-cleaner which operated decades ago contaminated the water table and the chemicals flowed to neighborhoods even across the street. There is an extensive record of cleanup actions being taken on a nearly monthly basis going years back, including continuous well monitoring and soil vapor intrusion investigation. The map that was sent out to residents shows the extent of how far the ground water plume reaches, it's stunning to see how far one spill can go depending on the water table [2].

There are open remediation cases like this in almost every strip mall across America. This is a widespread problem and most people just aren't aware of the extent of it.

[1] https://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/profile_report?global_...

[2] https://documents.geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/regulators/d...

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#185

Post by pazimzadeh »

tornato7 wrote: post #178
hanniabu wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This further assures my thought that Parkinsons is caused by gut bacteria

Say more about your theory

A gut bacterial amyloid promotes α-synuclein aggregation and motor impairment in mice

https://elifesciences.org/articles/53111

Note, this was in mono-colonized gnotobiotic mice.

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#186

Post by canadiantim »

andreskytt wrote: post #77
canadiantim wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My pet peeve is people dismissing potentially very valuable scientific results because they’re afraid of quackery… Yes we should be cautious but no we should not dismiss. In fact I consider myself very fortunate for stumbling on this information as it may be very helpful for someone I love and I want to explore every possible way that can help.

You did not, in fact, stumble upon information. You stumbled on a person making statements. There’s a difference, especially when lives are at stake.

In this context they're functionally equivalent, in that anyone making statements is also communicating information. Could you explain the difference that I did not grasp?

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#187

Post by timbit42 »

mahmoudhossam wrote: post #112
DavidPeiffer wrote: post #5

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.

Appears to be US only right now.

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#188

Post by Workaccount2 »

karussell wrote: post #167
Workaccount2 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have any sources? Or did you mean that ironically, because as a smoker you die earlier than the average gets Parkinson's?

It's well established that nicotine fends off parkinsons (but won't do anything if started when sympoms appear)

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C31&q=nic...

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#189

Post by georgeg23 »

athoun wrote: post #184
georgeg23 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems sensationalist

It doesn't seem sensationalist to me. I looked up three different strip malls that I am familiar with and all of them have some kind of PCE cleanup sites from previous or current dry-cleaners. Here's one example in Santa Clara of a dry cleaner that operated in the 60's and there has been an active remediation project to cleanup the groundwater that has been on-going to this day [1]. In this case a single dry-cleaner…

The Twitter thread says a single shot glass of the stuff will contaminate a site "forever". That's not even true for weapons grade plutonium.

Re: Significant breakthrough in search for Parkinson's biomarker

#190

Post by 93po »

zymhan wrote: post #149
whamlastxmas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, let’s make the companies that caused it pay for it

That's why we have the EPA Superfund program https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Superfund

It's clearly not doing its job well, there are still constant ecological disasters that never get properly addressed.
Post reply on HN