[HN Gopher] Japanese university finds Alzheimer's drug effective...
___________________________________________________________________
Japanese university finds Alzheimer's drug effective in treating
ALS
Author : amichail
Score : 180 points
Date : 2021-12-24 10:37 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (english.kyodonews.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (english.kyodonews.net)
| savant_penguin wrote:
| akimball wrote:
| ...But they aren't saying what the drug is
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| This publication, which has Takeo Kato as author, might be
| useful (it's about a curcumin derivative):
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34894926/
| ToddWBurgess wrote:
| I asked a neurologist I know about ALS drugs and he doesn't have
| a lot of faith in any of them.
|
| On a personal note, my mother had ALS. I can tell you it is a
| terrible disease and a terrible way to go. I really do hope they
| find something for it.
| joshocar wrote:
| I'm sorry that your mother had to go through that. My partner
| is a neurologist and she hates having to give an ALS diagnosis.
| It fills her with dread when symptoms align with a possible ALS
| diagnosis. If she doesn't have a conclusion diagnosis she will
| sometimes not even suggest that something might be ALS because
| of the suicide risk. Personally, I think we will have a
| treatment for it in my lifetime.
| hourislate wrote:
| >It fills her with dread when symptoms align with a possible
| ALS diagnosis. If she doesn't have a conclusion diagnosis she
| will sometimes not even suggest that something might be ALS
| because of the suicide risk.
|
| This is a huge problem. Someone close to our family spent a
| lot of money to get a diagnosis because none of the doctors
| wanted to "go there". They ended up having to visit the MAYO
| Clinic for 2 weeks and spent a small fortune to find out, it
| hurt the family financially.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| My middle school chemistry teacher offed himself in his
| backyard with a shotgun when he started noticing symptoms
| of Huntington's (which his mother died of). I'd taken
| chemistry with him the previous year and he was easily the
| best chemistry teacher ever.
|
| It's an issue but without a cure or even viable
| ameliorative treatment, suicide is 100% a a legit personal
| choice.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Suicide is not personal, as with any pre-mature death. It
| greatly affects the surviving family.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| So does ALS. People only live on average 2-5 years post-
| diagnosis, anyway, so, suicide really only speeds up the
| inevitable by a very tiny bit.
| vmception wrote:
| The immediate family member dying with Huntington's
| disease also clearly affected the rest of the family,
| that's basically saying her death wasn't personal either.
| Maybe this is an overly reductive false dilemma.
|
| Knowing an immediate family member died of something that
| has a genetic component gives people catalysts to watch
| closely for.
| loceng wrote:
| https://www.emcell.com/treatments/als-mnd/
|
| A potential treatment option for ALS, using fetal stem cells,
| and so why not widely known - especially not in North
| America; free documentary on the Emcell clinic here -
| https://stemcellsmovie.com/ - they've been doing research
| using fetal stem cells for 30 years, and providing clinically
| for 25.
|
| MS is also apparently stopped and regressed
| (damage/degeneration healed) if treated/healed if
| degeneration of the body's healing systems aren't too far
| degraded.
| ToddWBurgess wrote:
| It it my understanding from talking to the same neurologist
| that ALS is a diagnosis of exclusion. When everything is
| ruled out the last diagnosis is ALS.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Is that because ALS is such an unwelcome diagnosis that all
| alternative diagnoses are explored first?
|
| Or is there some other reason for testing theories in that
| order?
| largbae wrote:
| Generally the exclusion method is used because there is
| no conclusive direct test (or the test itself is
| damaging). Alzheimer's has no direct test either to my
| knowledge, though there is a lot of work going on.
| rewgs wrote:
| Good. A few years back, I was having questionable symptoms
| that pointed towards ALS, and my neurologist made the mistake
| of telling me.
|
| The two months between that day and the round of tests that
| were able to prove his theory wrong were very easily the
| worst of my life.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Very promising! I hope the human trials will be effective, we'll
| have to see in a few years how it all plays out.
|
| Until then, it's great news for mice all around.
| Kuinox wrote:
| in mice.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Is this trope necessary every time? It's clearly in mice in the
| article.
|
| Just consider it an update if you're skeptical, now they'll be
| moving on to the next set of mice w/ sporadic or non-inherited
| ALS....
| ekianjo wrote:
| It took them 6 paragraphs to mention mice. Thats astonishing
| how much they oversell this kind of stuff.
| [deleted]
| shawnz wrote:
| Is it really such a big deal for them to build hype around
| a potentially promising medical advancement? What's the
| downside of this kind of reporting? Even if the drug fails,
| maybe it will spur more research into similar candidates
| toast0 wrote:
| This type of reporting contributes to announcement
| fatigue. What use is all this hype now for something that
| is probably 5 years out from the market, if it even works
| (which past results suggest is unlikely).
| shawnz wrote:
| Has that actually been demonstrated? I don't personally
| feel fatigued by medical advancements which ended up not
| panning out. In fact they make me feel hopeful about the
| future and glad to exist in a society where such research
| is even possible.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| If people are so bothered by mouse research, why don't we have
| a line of research aiming to make humans look more like mice?
| msie wrote:
| They could have tried the drug on humans but they wouldn't have
| had the results they got with mice.
| TheChaplain wrote:
| They probably have plenty of candidates, but if the outcome
| would make the situation worse for the patient... Well,
| they'd be in for a world of bad PR and possibly legal issues.
|
| Imagine the headlines.. "Company X ruined the last living
| days of patient"
| omgitsabird wrote:
| This low-effort comment is popping up more and more.
|
| I would say just assume the title has "in mouse disease model"
| at the end of it.
|
| Then we can get away from the large dismissive negativity
| spiral that all of these threads turn into.
| busyant wrote:
| Low effort, but high information density.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| The warning is 100% correct. What works in mice only works in
| humans about 20% of the time and it's even smaller that it
| works without toxicity or adverse effects in humans even
| then. So eagerly expecting a human treatment is irrational
| and pollyanna.
|
| Typically it's 10-20 years after animal studies such as mice
| or monkeys before you can expect doctors to have it
| available. And that's assuming everything work just right.
|
| This is the same mistake MANY people make when some new
| wonder-technology is announced from university labs - it's
| another 20 years before an economically viable product that
| actually is available to consumers will be appearing. It's
| often called the "20 year rule". New battery technology could
| solve green energy? But it's just a lab discovery? Nope. Not
| anytime soon!!
|
| I recently did a study of this for penicillin: it was almost
| exactly 20 years from Fleming discovering it to when
| consumers could get it from their doctors or hospitals post-
| WW2!
|
| Transistors didn't start to eclipse vacuum tubes in consumer
| electronics until 20 years after the invention of the
| transistor (1948 to early 1970s). Same for integrated
| circuits - 20 years before the Silicon Valley boom took off
| (1959 to mid-to-late 1970s) and consumers started to benefit
| with PCs.
| junon wrote:
| Not really low effort if it points out a huge problem in the
| world of scientific journalism...
| omgitsabird wrote:
| Isn't this more of a problem with HN guidelines for
| submitting articles than anything else?
|
| If someone reads the article, they see where it says this
| is in a mouse model of an uncommon form of ALS.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Yes. There are lots of problems with the HN "guidelines,"
| not least of which that they're actually _rules_ you get
| punished for breaking and not "guidelines" you can
| choose not to follow.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| The article stated exactly the limitations of the
| experiment. It was conducted with mice and only mice with a
| less common form of ALS.
|
| I'd say the problem is less with journalism in this
| instance, and more-so with peoples limited attention spans.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| The article didn't even name the drug. It's a terrible
| article.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| I had a quick look around, no article seems to mention
| it, but the article leaves enough clues that it's pretty
| easy to find. The drug is curcumin derivative GT863, I'm
| not sure how much that enriched either of our
| understandings though.
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356971571_Therap
| eut...
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| It's a problem with the title.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| My point regarding attention span stands. The title could
| certain do with improvement, but people should not be
| consuming their news of the basis of titles.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| I do because most articles are crap. The comments are
| simply better quality. For example, I was able to tell in
| 2 seconds that this was on mice from reading the comments
| and so that I don't care about the article.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Quite often comments are wrong, top-rated comments are
| often reflective of bombastic conclusions arrived at (and
| upvoted) by people who had not read the article.
| D-Coder wrote:
| The first page of HN has thirty articles. I can't read
| all of them. I don't recognize the author's names, so I
| can't judge by that. The number of comments does not tell
| me if I will be interested in the article. The title is
| all I have to go on.
|
| Admittedly, I should probably assume that anything
| relating to Alzheimer's or Parkinson's has an implicit
| "(in mice)" tag.
| cute_boi wrote:
| "Mice lies Monkey Exaggerate"
|
| The title is deceiving and it should contain mice. And such
| criticism are okay in my book.
| jtbayly wrote:
| No.
|
| The title is clickbait. It claims there is an effective
| treatment for ALS.
|
| It is so bogus. In mice should be added to the title.
|
| Thank you, GP, for the "in mice" comment. In this case it was
| absolutely crucial for me getting what was going on.
| fareed79 wrote:
| It appears to be on mice only in the 5th paragraph, and the
| sole photo is of a patient (before it is said to be on mice).
| Sarcasm/negativity is a normal reaction when you spot an ad
| for a local university with a random research with especially
| touches most of us. It is not so hard to be honest and
| support honest research and these respectable advances
| without such tricks.
| dorkwood wrote:
| How do they find mice with ALS?
| [deleted]
| moffkalast wrote:
| If a medical researcher can't give a mouse cancer and cure it
| he ain't any good.
|
| Somewhat better ones can do the same for ALS it seems.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Mice models which have pretty much nothing to do with actual
| ALS.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| You're getting downvoted, but this is exactly right. We
| create a mutant mouse that has symptoms that are somewhat
| similar to the disease we're studying. Then we find a drug
| that cures the "disease" in the mouse. Then we try it in
| humans and it fails and we make the shocked Pikachu face.
| sva_ wrote:
| Similar deal with Alzheimer's.
| chaps wrote:
| Can you clarify? Like, I would assume that if it's still
| named "ALS" that there are _some_ commonalities. If those
| differences are big enough (to the extent that the models
| are nothing alike) why is the naming shared?
|
| Happy to accept "bad journalism"!
| johnisgood wrote:
| I dunno, but when they do research on MS (multiple
| sclerosis), they do it on mice with experimental allergic
| encephalomyelitis (EAE), which is an animal model of MS.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Every time I read about some drug that appeared to work in
| animal models but not in actual humans I wonder how often the
| opposite is true. We are necessarily limiting ourselves to
| drugs that work in humans + at least one other species.
| elektor wrote:
| If anyone is interested in a promising drug tested in humans and
| not mice, AMX0035 is under FDA review and had positive Phase II
| results.
|
| https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/comment/potential-fda-ap...
| [deleted]
| nefitty wrote:
| Valdenafil (Levitra) has shown some effect on ALS [1].
| Coincidentally, the related sildenafil (Viagra) was identified
| through computer-aided research as a drug of interest in
| Alzheimer's prevention. [2]
|
| 1.
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096999611...
| 2. https://www.everydayhealth.com/alzheimers-disease/viagra-
| may...
| therein wrote:
| It has very interesting effects. You'll find that it helps
| with ingrown hairs. They'll begin to get out on their own,
| within hours of taking it orally and in general become very
| eager to come out with simple hand motions.
|
| Someone should look into it. Consistent effect. I looked into
| it years ago and indeed PDE5 inhibition has something to do
| with ingrown hairs.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| It seems like a commonality if all these drugs that have
| multiple positive effects is that they all increase blood
| flow in some way? Am I wrong?
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Yes, Viagra in particular works by causing vasodilation.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-12-24 23:01 UTC)