[HN Gopher] Experimental Alzheimer's Vaccine Shows Promise in Mice
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       Experimental Alzheimer's Vaccine Shows Promise in Mice
        
       Author : gumby
       Score  : 51 points
       Date   : 2023-08-03 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
        
       | fragmede wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
         | knodi123 wrote:
         | Maybe you should say something about welcoming immortal mouse
         | overlords? Just a thought.
        
           | throwaway743 wrote:
           | Please don't. It's sad enough seeing the hn comment sections
           | degrade into looking like reddit's
        
             | fragmede wrote:
             | > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into
             | Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
             | 
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        
       | jsisto wrote:
       | This is great news for mice with Alzheimer's
        
       | BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
         | lame-robot-hoax wrote:
         | What
        
           | BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
           | I peered behind the curtain and I cannot lie to myself
        
       | reissbaker wrote:
       | We've cured "Alzheimer's in mice" over and over again. Sadly our
       | mouse model for Alzheimer's has not proven to be a good model for
       | Alzheimer's in humans.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | angiosperm wrote:
         | They bred up a mouse that gets something that looks like
         | Alzheimer's, and is very easy to cure it in. In the US, most of
         | two billion dollars annually goes for grants just to study
         | _this mouse_. Vanishingly few grantees ever so much as peek at
         | anything in or from human patients. Of course there is plenty
         | still to learn about that mouse, as about any organism, but
         | what has been far more thoroughly demonstrated than most
         | medical results is that, appearances aside, Alzheimer 's in
         | that mouse is very unlike in humans.
         | 
         | The only intervention I know of that shows robust results
         | preventing Alzheimers is having been recently vaccinated. It
         | doesn't seem to matter much for what, but several population
         | studies, involving tens of thousands of patients and
         | controlling for lifestyle confounders, show a reliable 40%
         | reduction in dementia risk for people recently vaccinated for
         | TDaP. Nobody will talk about it, apparently because it is
         | embarrassing to have no clue why it works. (Pressed, people
         | mumble about inflammation.) And, of course, no money is spent
         | figuring it out, or figuring out why vaccination doesn't seem
         | to help the other 60%.
         | 
         | Work in other countries has implicated herpes virus, and got
         | good outcomes from valacyclovir, again provoking little
         | interest from US researchers.
         | 
         | Whenever it, somehow, becomes possible to divert those two
         | billion dollars to somewhere they might do some good for
         | Alzheimer's patients, a whole population of biochemists who
         | only know about brain metabolism in _that mouse_ will need to
         | find something else to do. In the meantime, they get to
         | allocate the money to themselves.
        
         | resoluteteeth wrote:
         | I definitely wouldn't hold my breath on this vaccine working
         | but it's different from the drugs targeting beta amyloid
         | plaques and it's still possible it will work.
         | 
         | Even if the animal model they tested it using is suspect, the
         | theory behind drug itself (targeting senescent cells) is
         | plausible.
         | 
         | I wouldn't give it more than a 10% chance but without other
         | effective alzheimer's drugs even a small chance like that is
         | absolutely still worth doing clinical trials on.
        
       | kjksf wrote:
       | It merely slows progress of Alzheimer i.e. stops progress of
       | brain inflammation.
       | 
       | Strange that they call it a vaccine.
       | 
       | Nomenclature aside, it's even better to not develop the
       | inflammation in the first place.
       | 
       | And it can be done with a simple (but difficult) change: stop
       | eating insane amounts of sugar and carbs that most people eat in
       | standard American / western diet.
       | 
       | This prevents diabetes (because diabetes is "too much glucose in
       | your blood" disease and not eating sugar (glucose) and carbs (are
       | converted to glucose by our body).
       | 
       | Elevated levels of glucose trigger elevated levels of insulin. If
       | it persists for long periods of time, it causes inflammation in
       | our body, including brain.
       | 
       | This inflammation caused by diabetes is believed to be main cause
       | of Alzheimer. Some scientists even call Alzheimer a Type 3
       | diabetes.
       | 
       | As to "insane amounts of sugar": you probably consume insane
       | amount of sugar without knowing your doing it.
       | 
       | The optimal amount of glucose in our blood in 3 grams, which is 6
       | grams of sugar.
       | 
       | A daily recommended dose of sugar is 25 grams for women and 36
       | for men.
       | 
       | A single can of coca-cola is 33 grams of sugar. That's more than
       | a daily sugar budget for a woman and almost daily budget for a
       | man.
       | 
       | An average consumption by an American is 76.7 grams i.e. 2x daily
       | recommended dose.
        
         | lumb63 wrote:
         | Do you have any sources documenting the link between diabetes
         | and Alzheimer's? This is the first I've heard of that.
        
           | asow92 wrote:
           | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246646/
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | kjksf wrote:
           | https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=diabetes+alzhei.
           | ..
           | 
           | https://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/alzheimers-diabetes-link
           | 
           | You'll find numerous researches talking about this link.
        
         | saltymug76 wrote:
         | I'm glad that in the face of decades of research, you boiled
         | avoiding Alzheimer's down to just a few paragraphs. Well done!
        
         | armadsen wrote:
         | eFAD (early-onset Alzheimer's disease) runs in my wife's
         | family. It's a simple Mendelian dominant genetic trait. If you
         | get the mutated gene from your parent, you get Alzheimer's. Not
         | "well, you might get it". You get it. Usually in your early to
         | mid 50s. Her dad is in his early 60s and is in the late stages
         | of the disease. It's far, far more complex a disease than just
         | "don't eat sugar".
        
         | Narretz wrote:
         | > This inflammation caused by diabetes is believed to be main
         | cause of Alzheimer
         | 
         | then please don't start your comment as if this is verifiable
         | fact
        
           | asow92 wrote:
           | This is a real and open debate.
           | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246646/
        
       | PaulKeeble wrote:
       | A good solid step. Having produced an animal analogue of
       | Alzheimer's and now come to a vaccine against it showing basic
       | safety and effectiveness in mice is the step towards human
       | trials. Early yet its still years away, but hopefully another
       | awful disease is in the process of being reduced.
        
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       (page generated 2023-08-03 23:02 UTC)