Earlier quoted context omitted.
It took thirty years for the medical establishment to accept the hypothesis that the bacteria H. pylori was the cause of peptic ulcer disease, rather than excess stomach acid.
Yeah, but that was in 1982.
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Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease
21–30 of 163 posts
Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease
#22All of the Alzheimer's patients were 79 or older, while all of the control patients were younger than 79 except for one. More than half of the control patients were under 60. That doesn't seem like a very good control to me.
Perhaps but the discovery is still significant. Until now there was no such correlation with Alzeimher's and Fungi.
This has significant implications in terms of direction of future research.
Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease
#23It'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 if it holds up and then somehow getting approval to do drug trials (and I'm sure there will be no shortage of volunteers.) I can almost see a 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.
Hoping for a break through. It's certainly not without precedent that we find something extremely simple / obvious that turns out to be the key. On a side note: it's interesting to think that the crack pots you see writing about candidas infections being the cause of numerous hard-to-treat illnesses -might- actually be right (in a sense.)
Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease
#24There was recent speculation that alzheimer's was transmissible (prion thing). The transmissibility would make sense if it were actually the fungi causing the build up of the proteins and other damage.
From what I recall, the results in a study showed that the primary care giver of an alzheimer's patient was more likely to get alzheimer's themselves. The argument against transmissibility was that primary care givers tend to be related to the patient.. therefore the more likely reason for caregiver alzheimer's is genetics.
Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease
#25I wonder how many mental illnesses are the result of imbalances in foreign organic matter/microbes/fungi/dietary issues and not issues fundamental to the brain itself?
Exactly, we have lots of instances of other parts of the body becoming infected but brain sicknesses I think go untreated probably because they are hard to detect and the brain is so resilient.
Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease
#26I wonder how many mental illnesses are the result of imbalances in foreign organic matter/microbes/fungi/dietary issues and not issues fundamental to the brain itself?
An old but interesting article and discussion related to your question: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/1969/12/how-your-c... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3573694 Articles somehow related to the subject: http://www.nature.com/news/the-tantalizing-links-between-gut... http://universityofcalifornia.edu/news/do-gut-bacteria-rule-... http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/ http://www…
Thanks for all of the sources. I remember listening to a talk on NPR about the same subject a while back in my car but I couldn't find a link to it.
Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease
#27Wow sounds like a major breakthrough. How did they not notice this before?
They still haven't decided for sure if dietary cholesterol is bad for you, or salt for that matter.
The best minds of our generation are too busy selling ads to be bothered with trivial stuff like this.
Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease
#28If it turns out to be the cause too (maybe similar to cervical cancer), it's a huge discovery.
Asimov's book on science history is an interesting read, full with similar discoveries that were ignored for many years.
Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease
#29Interesting. Does this mean that a treatment with fungicides may stop/prevent AD onset or progress?
Depends on which way the arrow of causality points. If AD makes the brain vulnerable to fungal infection, probably not. But if fungal infection causes AD, then it seems likely. This might be a giant breakthrough, or it might be just a side effect. The uncertainty is not fun at all. But if the arrow points the right way, then yes it's possible that antifungals would be a big part of treatment.
Given that there is a low incidence of AD in India, i'd suspect that fungal infection is partly a cause. It would be interesting to plot food spiceyness vs AD rates and spiceyness vs fungal infection rates in the world population.
Re: Different Brain Regions Are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease
#30All of the Alzheimer's patients were 79 or older, while all of the control patients were younger than 79 except for one. More than half of the control patients were under 60. That doesn't seem like a very good control to me.
Perhaps but the discovery is still significant. Until now there was no such correlation with Alzeimher's and Fungi. This has significant implications in terms of direction of future research.
> Until now there was no such correlation with Alzeimher's and Fungi.
The point of the criticism seems to be that with an improper control group, there still isn't such a correlation, just a suggestion of a possibility of a correlation. But it might be a correlation between, e.g., age and fungal infection.
That's why, but for the variables under study, you want your control group to look as much like your experimental group as possible.