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Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study

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Re: Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study

#91

Post by thisislife2 »

jsbisviewtiful wrote: post #10
modeless wrote: post #4

Lithium orotate is available over the counter. People could try it today. > Since lithium has not yet been shown to be safe or effective in protecting against neurodegeneration in humans, Yankner emphasizes that people should not take lithium compounds on their own I reject this kind of blind safetyism. A cursory search suggests that lithium orotate has been used for decades, and the article suggests that "profound e…

> I reject this kind of blind safetyism. You said you searched to learn more about lithium, but somehow missed that it's highly recommended to be administered by doctors due to side effects after long term use. Anything that damages your kidneys or thyroids can kill you, so calling it "blind safetyism" is silly.

To add to what the parent comment said - Lithium is also prescribed for some mood disorders. So if you are thinking of self-medicating with it please be aware that it can mess with your brain chemistry too.

Re: Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study

#92

Post by modeless »

nahikoa wrote: post #62

Given that tens of millions people have been treated for bipolar disorder with Lithium Carbonate, shouldn't researchers have already seen a correlation with Alzheimer's in patients?

Lithium carbonate was tested and didn't help the mice at all because it was just absorbed by the plaques. The exciting thing is they found a form of lithium (already commonly available as a supplement) which is not absorbed by the plaques and showed a reversal of symptoms with P=0.00007. That's the kind of statistical significance I like to see in my medical papers.

Re: Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study

#93

Post by modeless »

amluto wrote: post #78

Interestingly, the proposed mechanism seems consistent with the apparent small benefit of anti-amyloid antibody therapy: if amyloid deposits interfere with lithium uptake, then removing them could restore some lithium availability without doing anything about the underlying initial cause of insufficient lithium.

Well, it does something about the initial cause of the deficiency, but it doesn't fix the deficiency by itself.

Maybe if you took lithium carbonate after clearing the plaques then you would get a recovery. But if just taking lithium orotate instead comprehensively fixes the deficiency regardless of plaques, as it seemed to do in this study, then maybe we don't need to bother treating the plaques at all.

Can't wait for human trials!

Re: Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study

#94

Post by exmadscientist »

funnym0nk3y wrote: post #81
exmadscientist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly the kidneys that get damaged, not so much the liver. It also has a massive amount of benign or merely annoying side effects. Lithium might even be the drug with the largest overall amount of side effects. It's certainly a weird one. High-dose lithium is extremely hard on your kidneys and may well lead to kidney failure in a decade or so. Medium-dose lithium is a lot more gentle but still requires monitori…

Lithium is far from the drug with the highest amount of side effects among psych meds. Take the first generation antipsychotics for example. They are nasty. As a matter of fact, lithium patients aren't much worse off when it comes to kidney function. Especially with modern levels of around 0.6 to 0.8 mmols. Lithium has many modes of action, ion channels like you said, but also GSK3 function, BDNF changes and many mor…

Sorry, yes, I meant "highest number" rather than "highest severity". Lithium being such a tiny single atom goes all over the place and touches all kinds of things, but not all that strongly on most of them.

Re: Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study

#95

Post by hirvi74 »

nartho wrote: post #50
ninetyninenine wrote: post #8

Lithium is a strange drug. It also cures bipolar disorder and nobody knows why. It also fucks up the liver over time and basically people on lithium eventually have to make a choice between dying or being insane.

I have (had?) a chronic skin condition called seborrheic dermatitis. It manifested as dry cracks over my lips and cheekbones exuding an orange/yellow liquid. It was itchy and looked absolutely disgusting. It would stay there for a few weeks and then come back in a few months. Treatment was cortisone which reduced the time it would but it would always reappear a couple of months later, it'd also lose effectiveness. Th…

I have a different condition, but I gave up on topical steroids years ago. What you are describing, the rebound effect, from them essentially defeats the purpose of using them, in my opinion. The longer you use them the more damaging they become causing one to require long breaks, which again, often makes things worse/futile. Though in my case, I was flaring back up in a matter of a week or two, not months.

Re: Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study

#96

Post by MarkusQ »

vczf wrote: post #63
nahikoa wrote: post #62

Given that tens of millions people have been treated for bipolar disorder with Lithium Carbonate, shouldn't researchers have already seen a correlation with Alzheimer's in patients?

From the abstract of the paper: > Replacement therapy with lithium orotate, which is a Li salt with reduced amyloid binding, prevents pathological changes and memory loss in AD mouse models and ageing wild-type mice. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09335-x Another source on lithium orotate: > LiOr is proposed to cross the blood–brain barrier and enter cells more readily than Li2CO3, which will theoreticall…

Hold on a second here; how is the anion of a soluble metal salt going to affect what happens to the cation after they separate?

Re: Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study

#97

Post by inejge »

modeless wrote: post #46
hollerith wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kidney damage, etc, are consequences of the very high doses of lithium needed to control bipolar disorder. Most experts who have been recommending lithium supplementation to support general health recommend doses about 100 or 300 times lower.

Exactly. An "exquisitely low dose" should be safe. And Alzheimer's also kills you, after making life no longer worth living. For people who already have it, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't try an appropriate dose.

> An "exquisitely low dose" should be safe.

The problem is that a subset of self-experimenters have the mindset "the more, the better" -- I still remember the Covid-era vitamin D discussions, with people openly reporting taking stupendous daily doses. (Lithium and vit. D are not in the same category, but you'll recognize the approach.)

So someone goes overboard, maybe damages their health, and traces it back to an article without the caveat. Lawsuit time! We're talking about fractions of a percent here, but with a wide enough potential readership you have a non-trivial chance of a hit. Common sense doesn't work at scale. Hence the CYA rhetoric.

Re: Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study

#98

Post by atombender »

funnym0nk3y wrote: post #79

There are so many misconceptions about lithium wrt to the human body. I don't know why so many people differentiate between lithium orotate and the lithium carbonate in psychiatry. Although they differ in absorption the active component is the lithium ion in both cases. Dosage is done according to lithium content, there are tables for converting from orotate to carbonate and back. Then the effects of lithium orotate…

The reason the researchers chose ororate is that it has reduced binding to amyloid. I don't know whether that is also true of carbonate, just pointing out they chose that lithium salt for a specific reason.

Re: Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study

#99

Post by amluto »

MarkusQ wrote: post #96
vczf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the abstract of the paper: > Replacement therapy with lithium orotate, which is a Li salt with reduced amyloid binding, prevents pathological changes and memory loss in AD mouse models and ageing wild-type mice. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09335-x Another source on lithium orotate: > LiOr is proposed to cross the blood–brain barrier and enter cells more readily than Li2CO3, which will theoreticall…

Hold on a second here; how is the anion of a soluble metal salt going to affect what happens to the cation after they separate?

Quoting the paper:

> We reasoned that the electrostatic interaction of the Li ion with Aβ deposits would be a function of the ionization capacity of the salt, and that Li salts with reduced ionization might show reduced amyloid sequestration. To assess ionization directly, we measured the conductivity of 16 lithium salts. Inorganic Li salts, including the clinical standard lithium carbonate (Li2CO3, hereafter LiC), showed significantly elevated conductivity, indicative of increased ionization, relative to organic Li salts (P = 8 × 10−4; Fig. 5a and Extended Data Fig. 7a). Of the organic Li salts, lithium orotate (C5H3LiN2O4, hereafter LiO) showed the lowest conductance across a broad Li concentration range (Fig. 5a and Extended Data Fig. 7a) and was therefore selected for further comparison with the clinical standard LiC.

From my not-exactly-expert understanding: lithium is a teeny tiny cation, and it can form compounds on a whole spectrum from ionic to covalent-ish. The authors are observing that lithium orotate does not fully dissociate in water.

Re: Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study

#100

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

jsbisviewtiful wrote: post #10
modeless wrote: post #4

Lithium orotate is available over the counter. People could try it today. > Since lithium has not yet been shown to be safe or effective in protecting against neurodegeneration in humans, Yankner emphasizes that people should not take lithium compounds on their own I reject this kind of blind safetyism. A cursory search suggests that lithium orotate has been used for decades, and the article suggests that "profound e…

> I reject this kind of blind safetyism. You said you searched to learn more about lithium, but somehow missed that it's highly recommended to be administered by doctors due to side effects after long term use. Anything that damages your kidneys or thyroids can kill you, so calling it "blind safetyism" is silly.

Lithium orotate has been available as a supplement for decades and hasn't shown adverse effects. Here is a study from a few years ago that also showed no harmful effects from lithium orotate: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027323002...
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