Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?

"Despite being described as a “cabal,” the amyloid camp was neither organized nor nefarious. Those who championed the amyloid hypothesis truly believed it, and thought that focusing money and attention on it rather than competing ideas was the surest way to an effective drug.

It has not worked out that way. Research focused on amyloid, and the development and testing of experimental drugs targeting it, have sucked up billions of dollars in government, foundation, and pharma funding with nothing to show for it. While targeting amyloid may or may not be necessary to treat Alzheimer’s, it is not sufficient, and the additional steps almost certainly include those that were ignored, even censored. Probably the most shattering turn came in March, when Biogen halted the study of what proponents called the most promising Alzheimer’s drug in years — an amyloid-targeting antibody."

I still refer to this article seven years later. Groupthink in the medical research space sets back progress by decades. And it's not just Alzheimers. The FDA's approval process is stymied by a CYA culture that fails to adopt the risk profile it needs to in order to potentially save large contingents of sick and dying.

If you study effects and not causes due to lack of measurements for reproducibility in any field of research, that's what comes out.

Also check out how the new and promising correlation started by observing the Wales eligibility for mandatory shingles vaccination during an outbreak and the effect on that test group when it comes to alzheimer or dementia in their old age.

Note that shingles (herpes zoster) virus is a dormant virus for decades, and it's not really treated because of that.

Also note that this was only discovered because people died and their data set was publicized because of that, which I hope that can happen in an anonymous way due to it being invaluable for medical research.

[1] https://www.alzheimer-europe.org/news/analysis-electronic-he...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11485228/

[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742...

[4] https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/shingles-vaccine...

Stress ages the body. Homeless people can age several years, being on the streets for just a few months.

I've also seen numerous people in these upbringings die in their 50s and 60s from kidney failure. My stepdad was one of them. My father too.

My father had a normal childhood, except he had a traumatic experience of shooting his twin brother while they were playing cowboys and indians. Spent his entire life blaming himself. Went through all the normal development phases. Not on any meds.

His body just started shutting down prematurely. It's common in people with those experiences. First, his breathing got bad. Then his kidneys. Then he started having heart problems.

And that's the pattern. Heart, lungs, kidneys. Which are all linked to the brain. And eventually lead to dementia-like symptoms. At least that's what the research on ACEs seems to point out.

Protective against the problem is anything which keeps you mentally active, such as socialization, work, religious community participation, hobbies, and meditation. Retirement, death of partner, isolation, sleep deprivation, depression, dissociation, psychosis, medications/drugs which interfere with restful sleep increase risk.

A possible falsification of this hypothesis would be if it's caused by inactivity or physical self neglect, as those often go hand in hand with the correlated and anti-correlated factors mentioned above.

This is particularly interesting:

> Intriguingly, studies show conscientiousness and neuroticism to be associated with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias but not with their pathologic hallmarks such as plaques, tangles, infarcts or Lewy bodies in the brain.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7484344/

Except early onset Alzheimers happens and it also happens to plenty of people for which none of those are true.