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

#51

Post by et2o » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 12:57 AM UTC

falsedan wrote: post #48

nickff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that doctors have become more accepting of theories which challenge the status quo? Do you have any reason to believe things have gotten better? Doctors still seem to prescribe blood pressure medication and low-salt diets to people with hypertension, depite the overwhelming number of studies which show that neither prescription has any impact on mortality rates. It doesn't look like they are particul…

Doctors are selected and trained to memorize insane amounts of facts, and how to match symptoms to facts. Updating those facts is hard since they're stored when the brain is young and still great at learning (there are refresher courses doctors are required to attend to keep their accreditation, but they lean heavily towards learning new facts, not changing existing ones).

Most doctors are constantly learning new information. It's not just refresher courses, you have to pass frequent and comprehensive examinations to stay board-certified.

I have no idea why HN has this bias against physicians.

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

#52

Post by nickff » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 12:57 AM UTC

et2o wrote: post #49

nickff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that doctors have become more accepting of theories which challenge the status quo? Do you have any reason to believe things have gotten better? Doctors still seem to prescribe blood pressure medication and low-salt diets to people with hypertension, depite the overwhelming number of studies which show that neither prescription has any impact on mortality rates. It doesn't look like they are particul…

You are mistaken. There is very compelling evidence that controlling hypertension reduces mortality.

Hypertension is correlated with mortality, but reducing blood pressure does not seem to improve patient outcomes.

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

#53

Post by appleflaxen » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 12:58 AM UTC

nickff wrote: post #43

low_battery wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that was in 1982.

Are you implying that doctors have become more accepting of theories which challenge the status quo? Do you have any reason to believe things have gotten better? Doctors still seem to prescribe blood pressure medication and low-salt diets to people with hypertension, depite the overwhelming number of studies which show that neither prescription has any impact on mortality rates. It doesn't look like they are particul…

what is the blood pressure data you are using to say that?

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

#54

Post by melling » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:00 AM UTC

chetanahuja wrote: post #37

Uptrenda wrote: post #23

It'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…

The discovery, if corroborated by others, could indeed be huge but I'm afraid it wouldn't open up new treatment options anytime soon. Fungal infections inside the body are really really hard to treat in the first place. Add to that the blood-brain barrier which makes it very hard to treat any type of infection in the brain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%E2%80%93brain_barrier#Fu... Combination of these two facto…

Could you be more specific about the timeline? I remember when people said there was nothing that could ever be done for people with HIV. My guess is that if you know a precise cause, you'll have some basic treatments within a decade and an effective "cure" within two decades.

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

#55

Post by low_battery » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:04 AM UTC

nickff wrote: post #43

low_battery wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that was in 1982.

Are you implying that doctors have become more accepting of theories which challenge the status quo? Do you have any reason to believe things have gotten better? Doctors still seem to prescribe blood pressure medication and low-salt diets to people with hypertension, depite the overwhelming number of studies which show that neither prescription has any impact on mortality rates. It doesn't look like they are particul…

No not Doctors, I am not dismissing the possibility of an oversight, but there are many things that got orders of magnitude better in 35 years (So, yes I have reason to believe things got better). We have much better imaging and analysis technology, much faster spread of information, 10000x faster computers etc. Considering all these, and many teams working on this problem for years, I am a bit skeptical.

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

#56

Post by calinet6 » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:07 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #44

dragonwriter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 experimenta…

That's not how correlations work.

That is how correlations may not work, though.

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

#57

Post by calinet6 » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:09 AM UTC

falsedan wrote: post #48

nickff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that doctors have become more accepting of theories which challenge the status quo? Do you have any reason to believe things have gotten better? Doctors still seem to prescribe blood pressure medication and low-salt diets to people with hypertension, depite the overwhelming number of studies which show that neither prescription has any impact on mortality rates. It doesn't look like they are particul…

Doctors are selected and trained to memorize insane amounts of facts, and how to match symptoms to facts. Updating those facts is hard since they're stored when the brain is young and still great at learning (there are refresher courses doctors are required to attend to keep their accreditation, but they lean heavily towards learning new facts, not changing existing ones).

This doesn't apply as cleanly to research, however, where the whole point is to discover new facts.

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

#58

Post by gus_massa » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:10 AM UTC

shostack wrote: post #41

chetanahuja wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discovery, if corroborated by others, could indeed be huge but I'm afraid it wouldn't open up new treatment options anytime soon. Fungal infections inside the body are really really hard to treat in the first place. Add to that the blood-brain barrier which makes it very hard to treat any type of infection in the brain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%E2%80%93brain_barrier#Fu... Combination of these two facto…

Would the recent discovery of lymphatic tubes going into our brains[1] be a potential area of focus for potential treatment? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9647253

The article is not 100% clear, but I think the flux in the lymphatic tubes goes from the brain to outside, as in the other organs. So it will not be useful to send medicine inside the brain.

The article describe an alternative theory for Alzheimer

> In Alzheimer’s, there are accumulations of big protein chunks in the brain. We think they may be accumulating in the brain because they’re not being efficiently removed by these vessels.

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

#59

Post by tim333 » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:12 AM UTC

>Therefore, 100% of the AD patients analysed thus far by our laboratory present fungal cells and fungal material in brain sections.

>No fungal material was observed in brain tissue from ten control individuals, whereas fungal infection was clearly present in brains from ten additional AD patients.

So 100% correlation so far - pretty impressive results.

I wonder about my dad who has an unexplained Parkinson's like nervous deterioration.

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

#60

Post by rajacombinator » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 1:12 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #27

rajacombinator wrote: post #8

Wow 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.

As someone busy working on selling ads, I can't tell whether I should appreciate or resent this comment...