[HN Gopher] Alzheimer's biomarkers now visible up to a decade ah...
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Alzheimer's biomarkers now visible up to a decade ahead of symptoms
Author : 01-_-
Score : 96 points
Date : 2025-02-15 18:02 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newatlas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newatlas.com)
| 01-_- wrote:
| well, now we have excellent news <3
| jimlawruk wrote:
| > Catching these clumps early while still in minute quantities
| can enable effective intervention
|
| I wonder what interventions they mean here. Drugs, lifestyle
| changes?
| caycep wrote:
| Presumably, a newer generation of anti-amyloid or anti tau
| agents. There are current gen ones (targeted monoclonal ab )
| which aren't that incredibly effective but there's some thought
| that maybe that's due to treating the wrong patients at the
| wrong time, vs starting therapy earlier on
| WillyWonkaJr wrote:
| Didn't it turn out that the amyloid plaque hypothesis was
| based on a fraudulent paper?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Nothing. We don't know of an intervention for Alzheimer's.
| Early detection _can_ enable effective intervention, but in
| this case it doesn 't.
| snailmailstare wrote:
| We have a lot of correlations and theories and now we can
| test over more than 10 years and see what happens when with
| patients where we have successfully kept these markers down
| from a much earlier start. I just hope they control correctly
| for brain bleeds and premature death.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That will be a fun set of experiments.
|
| As far as I'm aware, we currently have no evidence to
| suggest whether the appropriate model for this protein
| accumulation is more "it's like a cancer growing on your
| organ" or "it's like a scab growing over an open wound".
|
| Are scabs markers of injury? Of course.
|
| Could we reduce injuries by preventing the development of
| scabs? No, that's a new horrifying medical condition called
| hemophilia. In the general case, it's rapidly fatal.
|
| This is something that really bothers me about the current
| craze for suppressing inflammation. In that case, we
| _already know_ that inflammation is like scabs, a defensive
| reaction against some other problem. For Alzheimer 's, we
| don't know anything.
| trashface wrote:
| Probably not going to be super popular but maybe heating your
| brain for 20 years? https://text.npr.org/nx-s1-5293253
| bondant wrote:
| If going to the sauna daily is all it takes to prevent it,
| that would be quite a thing!
| maest wrote:
| Is Alzheimer's less prevalent in sauna going populatioo?
| bondant wrote:
| I don't know, but the parent's link article says:
|
| >"I spent 20 years in the Navy, most of it in the hot
| spots, like the engine rooms of ships--110 degrees is
| nothing on a ship," he says. That environment may have
| caused an increase in heat shock proteins, which were
| able to limit the spread of tau and prevent the onset of
| Alzheimer's. The scientists studying Whitney aren't sure
| if that's all, or even part, of the explanation. But they
| are hoping that the paper on Whitney will encourage other
| researchers to look for answers.
|
| So instead of going to work for the navy, one could just
| go to the sauna daily.
|
| Edit: turns out that it might be true: https://academic.o
| up.com/ageing/article/46/2/245/2654230?log...
| askonomm wrote:
| According to this it would be the opposite:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28687259/
|
| So maybe Sauna is good, but where Sauna is popular is
| usually a place that is very cold and humid, which is not
| good.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Elevated heat shock proteins actually makes good sense as a
| reason. We should check ClinicalTrials.gov using the key
| words: Alzheimer and "heat shock protein".
|
| I just tried anf found a total of 130 trials using Heat shock
| proteins 70 or 90 (HSP70 and HSP90) and with very few
| exceptions they are all cancer trials.
|
| Monoculture.
|
| Sauna sounds good at this point.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Would working out hard (HIIT), that makes the heart rate go
| up a lot (~180bpm) generate enough heat in the body for a
| similar effect?
|
| Basically, can I replace sauna with 30 minutes of vigorous
| cardio?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| So sauna/Turkish bath/hot-springs users have reduced
| incidence of Alzheimer's?
| josephpmay wrote:
| There's been evidence recently that GLP-1 Agonists can delay
| the onset of Alzheimer's symptoms. Look up the evoke and evoke+
| trials. This might be the first "real" treatment for
| Alzheimer's, and it's relatively low risk.
| nwienert wrote:
| [delayed]
| pedalpete wrote:
| We've been developing Sleep slow-wave enhancement tech for the
| last few years, and studies are showing promise as a potential
| prevention and management of AD.
|
| These links were not using our tech, but are based on the same
| principles of phase-targeted slow-wave enhancement. We have an
| enhanced protocol aiming to overcome some of the issues these
| researchers experienced with previous implementations.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10758173/
| https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.10778
| glaugh wrote:
| > ...small amounts of clumping tau protein in the brain and
| cerebrospinal fluid, which lead to Alzheimer's disease.
|
| I don't think this should be stated as a proven fact anymore,
| given the doubt now cast over the amyloid hypothesis
|
| This is a nice summary of the case:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/plain-english-with-der...
| im3w1l wrote:
| I've seen this point brought up many times over the years and
| yet research in this direction seems to continue, so I think
| there must be more to it. I asked chatgpt about it, and it
| claims that the controversial paper was influential but it was
| more about a certain sub-hypothesis that got called into
| question after that rather than the entire thing.
|
| Now I know that bringing up chatgpt is frowned upon here but I
| thought I should make an exception for this case as its not so
| easy for me to answer otherwise.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| You might enjoy "How Not To Study A Disease: The Story of
| Alzheimer's" by Karl Herrup (2023, MIT Press). Great sad
| overview of the hegemony of the Abeta hypothesis that now has
| a Tau hypothesis buddy.
|
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546010/how-not-to-study-a-
| di...
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Agree strongly with you. This statement make Alzheimer's into a
| wonderfully "simple" monogenic disease like Huntington's but
| all age-related disease have many complex interwoven weaker and
| stronger causes---even Huntington's disease in which the same
| mutation type (numbers of CAG mutations in neurons) can cause
| symptoms over a 20 year range.
|
| Too bad that headlines are inherently short and sometimes
| misleading. Simple sells.
| pedalpete wrote:
| The problem with the amyloid hypothesis is most likely not that
| it is wrong, but that it is incomplete, and I would say that is
| the problem with this test as well.
|
| I work in neurotech/sleeptech, and AD researchers are using (or
| want to use) slow-wave enhancement to prevent and possibly
| manage AD.
|
| However, the test for AD is still a psychological tests along
| with neuroimaging to look for tau tangles and amyloid plaque
| build up.
|
| It has been discussed that we may be looking at multiple
| different diseases which have similar symptoms and without
| completely understanding the disease itself, we are
| categorizing them as AD, though they may have different
| pathways.
|
| Though we can't ignore the challenges to the amyloid
| hypothesis, we also shouldn't completely throw it out. Most of
| the experts I've spoken with still believe it is the best
| hypothesis we have, but that we also should not ignore other
| possibilities.
| tim333 wrote:
| It surprises me that some obvious clues to treatment are
| passed over as I guess they don't fit the politics? Like
|
| >A team of researchers in Jerusalem, he says, decided to look
| at patients who survived bladder cancer and compare dementia
| prevalence among patients treated with BCG and those who
| weren't. "Do they differ in the rate at which they get
| Alzheimer's disease?" The answer is yes - the BCG group
| appeared to get 75% protection against Alzheimer's. A number
| of studies have now found varying levels of protection from
| BCG, with an average, according to one meta-analysis, of 45%.
|
| There's a lot of evidence a lot of it is set off by
| infectious microbes which can be treated in the usual way.
| (From
| https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/dec/01/the-
| bra...)
|
| The 'politics' puzzles me. Maybe the head of department got
| fame for hypothesis A and feels his power or money is
| threatened by hypothesis B? It's not what science should be
| about.
|
| (There was an entertaining angry Sabine Hossenfelder youtube
| a few minutes ago on the corruption of science just wasting
| money, but really letting people die of Alzheimer's is worse.
| https://youtu.be/shFUDPqVmTg)
| swores wrote:
| Is it not still the case that they do correlate, and therefore
| the article talking about them as biomarkers is not making the
| mistake you think it is (as if it was talking about them as the
| thing to get rid of to prevent Alzheimer's)? Because "lead to"
| is not the same as "causes".
|
| Or has latest research shown that even a non-causal link should
| be dismissed?
| everdrive wrote:
| Until we have a way to actually treat Alzheimer's, this seems
| like a mixed blessing at best. I suppose you could get your
| affairs in order, you but won't be enjoying much of those 10
| years.
| RhysU wrote:
| Why does one need a looming Alzheimer's issue to get one's
| affairs in order?
|
| Wills, etc should be done decades before that stage of life. As
| soon as one has any spouse or dependents one should do all that
| jazz.
| codingdave wrote:
| There would be a different level of detail if you knew for a
| fact you were going that direction. Living wills and power of
| attorney are often fairly generic, as you don't know what
| situation will arise that will make them necessary. Well, now
| you would know a specific likely scenario, and you can get
| specific about each step of the expected progression.
|
| You may even change your financial plans - you would know
| that you need to get all the life you can out of the next 10
| years, and you know you will have above average costs for
| medical care after those 10 years. I do not envy the
| work/life balance decisions to be made in such a scenario,
| but at least you get the opportunity/burden to make them.
| pedalpete wrote:
| There are multiple pharmaceuticals which are used to slow the
| progression of the disease.
|
| We're in the neurotech/sleeptech space and have been developing
| slow-wave enhancement tech for the last few years, our
| technology is beginning to be used in clinical studies.
|
| These studies (using other less effective devices) have shown
| promise https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10758173/
| https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.10778
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