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

nature.com

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

#61

Post by calinet6 »

moyix wrote: post #9
mschuster91 wrote: post #3

Interesting. Does this mean that a treatment with fungicides may stop/prevent AD onset or progress?

The paper mentions in passing in the discussion section: "Moreover, antifungal treatment in two patients diagnosed with AD reversed clinical symptoms [51,52]. The interpretation of these results was that perhaps these patients were misdiagnosed." [51] Ala, T. A., Doss, R. C. & Sullivan, C. J. Reversible dementia: a case of cryptococcal meningitis masquerading as Alzheimer’s disease. J Alzheimers Dis 6, 503–508 (2004)…

Wow. So there's a possibility that they were, in fact, diagnosed properly with Alzheimer's, and accidentally treated properly. Amazing.

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

#62

Post by et2o »

nickff wrote: post #52
et2o wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most evidence does not suggest this.

2015: "[...] the NIH made the bold announcement that intensive intervention with a combo of three drugs to reach a new target systolic blood pressure of under 120 mm Hg reduced the rate of heart attacks, heart failure and stroke by 30% and cardiovascular deaths by 25%, "

http://www.healthnewsreview.org/2015/09/nih-sprint-study-spa...

http://www.cochrane.org/CD000028/HTN_blood-pressure-lowering...

http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/04/16...

http://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases/...

There's more evidence available.

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

#63

Post by et2o »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #45
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…

First, there are antifungal drugs that pass the BBB, with varying efficacy: https://www.medicine.wisc.edu/sites/default/files/domfiles/i... Second, antifungals have positively affected AD-like symptoms, though possibly through misdiagnosis.

It's known to be pretty difficult to treat a lot of fungal infections in the CNS. The agents we have are pretty nasty, with severe side effects.

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

#64

Post by Myrmornis »

soneca wrote: post #16
zmmmmm wrote: post #14

This seems like potentially an incredibly important breakthrough with a perplexingly weird title. Different brain regions? Different to what? From reading the study, the novelty is not about the "difference" of the brain regions, but the fact that fungal infection is found in AD patients at all. The controls had no infection, not different infections in their brains. I'm curious if the title makes sense to people in…

As a layman, i understood the title correctly I guess. That there were fungi not just on one spot, but different (ie several) regions.

But that would be bad English. I wouldn't expect the Nature editors to let such bad English slip through in an important title, but I admit it is frustratingly common to see people not caring too much about that sort of thing.

I had the same concern as GP. I don't understand the title; the controls seem not to have fungi in their brain, which had always been my assumption about, for example, my brain.

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

#65

Post by tim333 »

n0us wrote: post #11

I 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?

Schizophrenia is an interesting one showing a very high correlation with antibodies for a retrovirus called HERV-W which became part of the DNA of our pre-human ancestors about 60 million years ago and which has been passed down ever since.

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jun/03-the-insanity-virus

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

#66

Post by tim333 »

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…

>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.

It may not be so hard to get data - try anti-fungals and see if the patients get better. There are plenty of patients and the drugs could be tried in countries other than the US. It could be possible to get data in a few weeks rather than years of trials.

There seem to be about a dozen anti-fungals at the moment which could be tried. Presumably the best choice would depend on which fungi was involved. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17381184

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

#67

Post by nonbel »

I bet if they double stain with anti-amyloid-Beta they will see the staining overlap. They just say they used "antibody raised against proteins obtained from C. glabrata, C. famata, C. albicans, P. betae and S. racemosum", so they don't even know (or want to say) what these antibodies react with...

Amyloids have generic secondary structure (can be created from any amino acid sequence under the right conditions) and yeast produce amyloids. They quite possibly raised antibodies towards yeast amyloids and then stained human amyloids. It is strange they do not report staining these brains for amyloid-Beta, it is an obvious thing to do.

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

#69

Post by zmmmmm »

Myrmornis wrote: post #64
soneca wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a layman, i understood the title correctly I guess. That there were fungi not just on one spot, but different (ie several) regions.

But that would be bad English. I wouldn't expect the Nature editors to let such bad English slip through in an important title, but I admit it is frustratingly common to see people not caring too much about that sort of thing. I had the same concern as GP. I don't understand the title; the controls seem not to have fungi in their brain, which had always been my assumption about, for example, my brain.

After reflecting I am wondering if this is a result of the natural tendency of scientists to avoid any hint of overstating their work. Were the fungal infections all in the same region or by the same fungus it'd be absolutely shocking. It'd be a "cold fusion" level revolution for the field - and a "cold fusion" level embarrassment for them if they are wrong. So they are extremely keen to put up front that the picture is not nearly so clear as that.

There is also a tendency when scientists are extremely confident they have found something incredibly important to understate it. I always think of the Watson and Crick "It has not escaped our notice ..." statement in this context.

This is all based on guesswork though, so that's why I'm curious about what people in the field think.

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

#70

Post by beatpanda »

rajacombinator wrote: post #60
CamperBob2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

You should quit.
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