[HN Gopher] Alzheimer's disease can be reversed in animal models...
___________________________________________________________________
Alzheimer's disease can be reversed in animal models? Study
Author : thunderbong
Score : 397 points
Date : 2025-12-25 15:22 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (case.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (case.edu)
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| The authors report that restoring NAD+ balance in the brain --
| using a compound called P7C3-A20 -- completely reversed
| Alzheimer's pathology and recovered cognitive function in two
| different transgenic mouse models (one amyloid-based, one tau-
| based). The mice had advanced disease before treatment began.
|
| Three comments:
|
| - You can actually buy the drug here:
| https://focusbiomolecules.com/p7c3-a20-nampt-activator-prone...
| It's a simple small molecule. If this stuff works, expect it to
| be everywhere within just a couple of years.
|
| - There's room for skepticism. As Derek Lowe once wrote:
| "Alzheimer's therapies have, for the most part, been a cliff over
| which people push bales of money. There are plenty of good
| reasons for this: we don't really know what the cause of
| Alzheimer's is, when you get down to it, and we're the only
| animal that we know of that gets it. Mouse models of the disease
| would be extremely useful - you wouldn't even have to know what
| the problem was to do some sort of phenotypic screen - but the
| transgenic mice used for these experiments clearly don't
| recapitulate the human disease. The hope for the last 25 years or
| so has been that they'd be close enough to get somewhere, but
| look where we are."
|
| > https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/just-how-worthless...
|
| - If the drug's mechanism of action has been correctly assigned,
| it's very plausible that simply supplementing with NMN, NR, or
| NADH would work equally well. The authors caution against this
| on, IMO, extremely shaky and unjustified grounds. "Pieper
| emphasized that current over-the-counter NAD+-precursors have
| been shown in animal models to raise cellular NAD+ to dangerously
| high levels that promote cancer."
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| > Pieper emphasized that current over-the-counter
| NAD+-precursors have been shown in animal models to raise
| cellular NAD+ to dangerously high levels that promote cancer.
|
| Does this mean that people are having to trade Alzheimer in
| exchange for high risk of cancer? Or does this mean that we
| need better precursors that don't require that trade off?
| juujian wrote:
| It's a quality of life vs years left calculation you have to
| make on a case by case basis.
| mmooss wrote:
| You can't make calculations without data, and in this case
| you have none: we have no idea of the effects on humans.
| shawnz wrote:
| Keep reading:
|
| > Pieper emphasized that current over-the-counter
| NAD+-precursors have been shown in animal models to raise
| cellular NAD+ to dangerously high levels that promote cancer.
| The pharmacological approach in this study, however, uses a
| pharmacologic agent (P7C3-A20) that enables cells to maintain
| their proper balance of NAD+ under conditions of otherwise
| overwhelming stress, without elevating NAD+ to
| supraphysiologic levels.
| luma wrote:
| I think it means one should read the very next sentence:
|
| > Pieper emphasized that current over-the-counter
| NAD+-precursors have been shown in animal models to raise
| cellular NAD+ to dangerously high levels that promote cancer.
| The pharmacological approach in this study, however, uses a
| pharmacologic agent (P7C3-A20) that enables cells to maintain
| their proper balance of NAD+ under conditions of otherwise
| overwhelming stress, without elevating NAD+ to
| supraphysiologic levels.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| There's no good evidence that supplementation with NMN, NR,
| etc. increases the risk of cancer in healthy people. There's
| some speculation that it might be risky for people with
| cancer to take those supplements, but the picture is far from
| clear. Some papers even suggest that they can be beneficial.
| (e.g., https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10177531/ )
|
| In terms of risk-benefit analysis, _if_ this stuff actually
| cures Alzheimer 's, then even a 10x increased risk of cancer
| (all types) is acceptable, as Alzheimer's is frequently a
| fate worse than death whereas cancer can be managed whilst
| keeping your personality and sanity intact. In reality, the
| increased risk of cancer from something like NMN is perhaps
| 1.005x. To all appearances, totally negligible.
|
| The problem, for Pieper, is that NMN/NR/NADH are ubiquitous
| and cost pennies per dose. So, _if_ they work (big if), this
| new research is unmonetizable. The team leads would win a
| Nobel Prize, but Big Pharma gigabucks are out of the
| question. Let 's see what happens.
| nkmnz wrote:
| Could explain how a compound that's already on the market
| and has been patented for (some) medical use at least once
| in 2015 (expiring 2035) might make a good case for "Big
| Pharma gigabucks"? I thought one reason for a lack of
| research into "repurposablity" of existing small molecule
| drugs is the fact that new applications cannot be
| independently patented?
| cyberax wrote:
| You absolutely can patent existing drugs. There's a whole
| scummy pharma industry that takes existing drugs that are
| widely used off-label and patents that off-label use.
| directevolve wrote:
| I think it's worth addressing this with more nuance.
|
| Companies can get a METHOD-OF-USE PATENT (MOU) on an old
| drug for a new INDICATION.
|
| This gives them the exclusive right to LABEL AND MARKET
| that drug for that indication for a period of time.
|
| I however, doctors can prescribe and pharmacists can
| substitute generics for the new indication, regardless of
| the MOU.
|
| For a company to profit off an MOU, they strategically
| need to create a new FORMULATION. This is a new dose or
| delivery mechanism (extended release, topical, etc). A
| new formulation can be protected with conventional
| patents that go beyond an MOU.
|
| With an MOU + patent on a new formulation, the company
| has a brand where they are the only ones allowed to make
| the new formulation and the only ones with a product
| approved to be marketed for the new indication.
|
| Getting FDA approval for the new brand is not the main
| hurdle for the company. To get insurers to pay the
| premium they want over the cost of existing treatment
| options, they have to show it's safer or more effective
| than those existing options. Otherwise insurance will
| block it.
|
| In principle, this means that repurposing should only
| enable companies to profitably repurpose off patent off
| label applications if they can provide a real patient
| benefit.
|
| Whether this is the best or most efficient way to promote
| this kind of innovation, or whether it works as well in
| practice as it would seem in theory, is a separate
| question.
| rockskon wrote:
| You don't patent a use. You're thinking trademark.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Furthermore, we don't even know whether NAD precursor
| supplementation works. They raise intracellular NAD+
| levels, but unclear whether they raise intercellular NAD+,
| which is what really matters. There are also those that say
| NAD+ recycling matters more than we think, and precursors
| don't address that.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _raise intracellular NAD+ levels, but unclear whether
| they raise intercellular NAD+, which is what really
| matters_
|
| Why?
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Urgh I made a mistake. I meant the other way around:
| intracellular matters more, but intercellular is easier
| to measure.
| mmooss wrote:
| It means we have no idea if this would work or how it would
| work, and discussing it as a treatment for humans is badly
| mistaken.
| Palomides wrote:
| >expect it to be everywhere within just a couple of years.
|
| there are studies about this compound from a decade ago, kinda
| doubt it's going to be a breakthrough at this point
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Searching for "P7C3-A20" just now, looks like it's readily
| available now from multiple sources.
| cj wrote:
| Is this the same NAD+ that's prescribed by longevity /
| hormone clinics?
|
| Edit: after some googling, sounds like NAD+ (which you can
| get from real doctors) is the "building blocks" similar to
| how protein is the building blocks for muscle, while the
| experimental compound changes/enhances how the building
| blocks are used inside your cells.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| So you might need some NAD+ precursor like NMN and this
| compound for it to work in humans because by the time
| you're old it's much harder for your body to make. Was
| the experiment done in older mice or younger ones that
| have NAD+ but artificial Alzheimer's ?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| What's the current state of between NMN, NR and straight-
| up niacin?
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > and we're the only animal that we know of that gets it.
|
| Is this actually true? I thought it was pretty common for
| elderly pets
| xenospn wrote:
| Elderly pets have loss of cognitive function/memory, but I
| don't think it's the same disease.
| anonym29 wrote:
| What's the objective, clearly disambiguated, empirically
| demonstrable difference between memory loss, dementia, and
| Alzheimer's?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Alzheimer's is, by definition, dementia with associated
| amyloid plaques in the brain. Since you can't detect the
| plaques without cutting into the brain, the diagnosis is
| normally given based on symptoms of dementia (significant
| loss of memory or other cognitive functions) without
| other clear reasons (no evidence of vascular events, head
| trauma, brain tumors or other neurological diseases etc).
| armadsen wrote:
| My understanding is that amyloid plaques can actually be
| seen with a specialized PET scan now, so it can be more
| definitively diagnosed in living people.
| anonym29 wrote:
| You mentioned amyloid plaques. What about tau tangles? I
| thought Alzheimer's required both. If someone (or some
| dog, for that matter) has amyloid plaques but no tau
| tangles, is that Alzheimer's? If they have tau tangles
| but no amyloid plaques, what is it?
|
| And what about the brains that show amyloid plaques, tau
| tangles, and Lewy bodies? Or plaques plus vascular
| lesions? At autopsy, most elderly brains show mixed
| pathology. Does that person have Alzheimer's plus Lewy
| body dementia plus vascular dementia? Three diseases? Or
| one brain failing in multiple correlated ways that we've
| artificially carved into separate categories?
|
| It sounds like we have at least five different
| pathological markers that correlate with cognitive
| decline, often co-occurring, with inconsistent symptom
| mapping. What makes 'Alzheimer's' a disease rather than a
| region we've named in a high-dimensional space we don't
| really understand all that well?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > What makes 'Alzheimer's' a disease rather than a region
| we've named in a high-dimensional space we don't really
| understand all that well?
|
| Nothing. I think it's sometimes in fact called a
| syndrome, not a disease per se. Since we don't really
| understand the mechanism of action, it remains more of a
| diagnosis by exclusion rather than anything else.
| mmooss wrote:
| > There's room for skepticism.
|
| And there's room for thinking there's water in the ocean. We
| have no idea whether this would work at all or how it would
| work at all in humans. We have one experiment in mice, which as
| you say can't have Alzheimer's.
|
| This is a nice step, like developments in fusion energy. That's
| part of research, and let's hope and investigate it, but it's
| absurd to think about it as anything but a science project
| right now.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| And the author of the paper has disclosed that they have
| patent on the drug being tested. Let's see if the results can
| be reproduced by others. Then let's see how it tests with
| humans.
| reissbaker wrote:
| Sadly, it's worse. We don't have one experiment that works in
| mice: we have dozens, if not hundreds. We've cured
| "Alzheimer's in mice" many times over. The treatments never
| work in humans, because it's not the same disease. We don't
| know the root cause of the human disease and so we can't
| model it accurately in mice.
| everdrive wrote:
| I totally get that people are not mice, however animals
| studies have been useful for all sorts of diseases. Are
| they really uniquely bad for Alzheimer's?
| adinb wrote:
| No. I believe the problem is with our artificial models
| of Alzheimer's in mice.
| greygoo222 wrote:
| To put it simply, mice don't get Alzheimer's. We're not
| studying mice with Alzheimer's, we're studying mice with
| an mutation chosen for resembling Alzheimer's. But we
| don't know whether this model replicates the actual
| mechanisms of the disease, or if it's superficial.
| scarmig wrote:
| > Pieper emphasized that current over-the-counter
| NAD+-precursors have been shown in animal models to raise
| cellular NAD+ to dangerously high levels that promote cancer.
|
| As someone who's seen both cancer and Alzheimer's up close,
| that would be a very easy choice.
| kingofmen wrote:
| Uh... which one? Choice is not obvious to me, and I think it
| would depend on the type of cancer.
| ramencentral wrote:
| Cancer is better than Alzheimer's. There is no comparison.
| I wouldn't wish Alzheimer's or dementia on my worst enemy.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Cancer times a million
| scarmig wrote:
| Cancer. The worst types of it have the advantage of killing
| quickly. Alzheimer's destroys the self, and you survive a
| long time with it, leading to much more suffering, both to
| you (to the extent you continue to exist) and to your
| family.
| deepspace wrote:
| I have a different perspective. The worst types of cancer
| kill slowly and cause agonizing suffering.
|
| Alzheimer's leads to negative outcomes for your
| caregivers, but by many accounts many affected
| individuals do not suffer all that much, if at all, due
| to their lack of awareness.
| shepardrtc wrote:
| From multiple personal experiences, including both of my
| parents, dementia is a slow, horrible death where you are
| robbed of your dignity and end up dragging all of your
| relatives through a very long, very torturous hell. You
| will be drooling, pissing, and shitting yourself, all while
| slowly reverting back to a low IQ childhood mentality where
| you're very likely to have outbursts and verbally or
| physically attack the people around you. Your loved ones
| will be tormented, and if you don't have loved ones then if
| you're lucky you'll be tossed into a room and forgotten
| about by underpaid, overworked staff at some run-down
| nursing home. If you're not lucky you'll be laying in a
| gutter on the street until you die.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Interestingly my wife helped a friend whose father had
| the disease during the pandemic.
|
| He had worked as a professor and after retirement had
| suffered with AD for years but had stayed "independent"
| because his wife was high functioning mentally but low
| functioning physically and formed a good team.
|
| He'd bought long term care insurance so he had the
| resources to afford both a room at a care home but also
| personal help from home aides, including my wife. He
| didn't really know what was going on most of the time but
| he never got angry or flustered and was always pleasant
| to deal with.
|
| We had trouble with certain homes having a way they want
| to do things or requiring things that weren't really
| necessary, one insisted that he get a pacemaker because
| he had bradycardia. When he lived with his son between
| homes probably the most difficult thing was that he got
| up in the night to use the bathroom and would end up
| urinating in the wrong place. He got much better care
| than many residents because people were always coming
| around to see him and the staff knew that we cared and
| would advocate for him.
|
| He passed away at 92 and outlived many of the people who
| knew him at work so he had just a small memorial
| ceremony. I saw it as an example of healthy aging and
| talked about it a lot with my wife -- and it made me
| think about myself and my own fear that my ability to
| compensate for my schizotaxia may degrade when my brain
| degrades and I can picture myself becoming really nasty
| and it gives me all the more incentive to rewrite my
| habits while I still can.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Sadly, cancer isn't one singular disease. Types of cancer
| can be excruciatingly painful for many years, which is
| also tormenting to everyone around you. I wouldn't wish
| either on anyone.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Seeing my grandmother go through dementia for 10 years made
| me incredibly angry that we don't have assisted suicide
| available for people.
|
| People with the emotional and compassionate depth of a
| child are the ones keeping us from allowing people to die
| with dignity.
| scarmig wrote:
| If I were diagnosed with Alzheimer's, I would seek out
| assisted suicide. But I think it's more complicated than
| that: its existence incentivizes pushing people toward
| assisted suicide. The government finds a way to help with
| bloated medical care budgets; unscrupulous family members
| guilt trip the sick to choose the option to keep the
| inheritance intact.
|
| The best solution allows it for severe cases, while still
| investing money in research and spending money for
| palliative care so it remains an option and not a demand.
| But that's a tricky line to maintain.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| My grandmother's case ended up bankrupting my grandfather
| and seriously straining the rest of the family. Which
| ultimately put my grandfather in a pennyless position
| when he was in his 90's, and poor state care when he was
| declining - not what he or my grandmother worked their
| entire lives for. Our family couldn't replace what was
| lost in the years of care for my grandmother's body, long
| after she herself was gone.
|
| _Never_ something she would have wanted, but you don 't
| really have a choice and dignified death is never given
| as an option.
| Tepix wrote:
| > dignified death is never given as an option
|
| That's not a universal law, in fact it is different in
| other countries, i.e. it is something that can be
| changed.
| chasil wrote:
| It appears that there are options for care in other
| countries that are much less expensive.
|
| https://www.alzint.org/news-events/news/health-tourism-
| the-l...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _current over-the-counter NAD+-precursors have been shown
| in animal models to raise cellular NAD+ to dangerously high
| levels_
|
| Is this a problem with the molecule or the dose?
| tsoukase wrote:
| Except that time of death comes on average many years later
| for Alzheimer's than cancer. In the same thought, better die
| from heart attack instantly but unfortunately much earlier,
| which would be devastating for the relatives.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > - You can actually buy the drug here:
| https://focusbiomolecules.com/p7c3-a20-nampt-activator-prone...
| It's a simple small molecule. If this stuff works, expect it to
| be everywhere within just a couple of years.
|
| There are numerous chemical supply companies that will list
| chemicals like this "for sale". They might not have it in stock
| but they hope they'll get your search traffic and be able to
| synthesize it if you place an order.
|
| If you look at the amounts, they're tiny. I don't know the
| doses that would be used in humans but typically ordering from
| chemical supply shops would be economically infeasible for just
| about any drug. These are meant for one-off studies and
| experiments, not ongoing human use.
|
| There have been a growing number of online groups arranging to
| do group buys of synthesized experimental drugs based on
| studies. I've followed a few of them and the results range from
| people losing their money, receiving product that is too
| contaminated to use, or in some cases they go to great lengths
| to verify the chemical but then discover it doesn't do what the
| original study promised it would do. In some of the more
| horrifying cases I've seen forum posts from people reporting
| long lasting chest pains from one chemical, and another
| chemical was sending people into psychosis. So if (when) these
| chemicals start appearing on group buy sites I suggest ignoring
| it until more research is done. Making yourself into a lab rat
| is not a good idea.
| chasil wrote:
| There appears to be some danger in using NAD+ without the
| supervision of an experienced physician.
|
| "Pieper emphasized that current over-the-counter
| NAD+-precursors have been shown in animal models to raise
| cellular NAD+ to dangerously high levels that promote
| cancer."
| digitaltrees wrote:
| Most people with Alzheimer's are older and would probably
| trade having their cognitive abilities back even with
| increased risk of cancer
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| They mean the fake Alzheimer's they induce by injecting poison
| into 3 month old animals or which develops in mice genetically
| engineered to have diseases that aren't Alzheimer's but are
| somewhat similar to Alzheimer's in some ways, not the kind where
| you wait 70 years for a human to develop which they don't even
| really understand what causes it.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Agree. As far as I remember, mice don't get real Alzheimer, so
| they only have a model that is somewhat similar.
|
| Let's hope the cure can be transfered to humans, but I think
| the chances are extremly low.
| timcobb wrote:
| Yeah, we got it!
| busyant wrote:
| > the fake Alzheimer's they induce ....
|
| I used to work with a guy who had been a scientist at a large
| pharma company (we were both working at a small biotech start-
| up at the time).
|
| He told me an interesting story... basically, scientists at his
| company would get an _extra_ year-end bonus if they had worked
| on a drug candidate that made it past animal studies and into
| human (clinical) trials.
|
| He told me that one way to 'consistently' get the extra bonus
| was to work on candidate drugs for neurological diseases (e.g.,
| Alzheimer's, etc.) because ... the animal models for those
| diseases were (generally) dog shit, so it was easy to find a
| drug that 'cured' whatever happened to be your neurological
| disease of interest in mice/rats/etc.
|
| Then you get your bonus and the drug fails in humans.
|
| Lather, rinse, repeat.
| jtrn wrote:
| This is totally improper reporting of the study.
|
| When enough words, framing, and unstated important premises are
| omitted, it crosses over from the realm of incomplete or
| misleading into plain outright lying in my worldview.
|
| They claim "Reverses advanced AD in mice." What they did is
| reverse symptoms in genetic models.
|
| They claim to "Restore NAD+ homeostasis," ignoring that NAD might
| not even be causally related to Alzheimer's, just a side effect.
| It's like saying we cured a house fire because we efficiently
| removed the ashes after the fire. It's the Tau thing all over
| again.
|
| The claim: "Conservative molecular signatures" when in reality,
| 5xFAD mice are poor predictors of human clinical success to such
| a degree that it's statistically more common for mice studies to
| NOT transfer to human biology than to do so.
|
| They also make unsupported claims like "Safer than NAD+
| precursors (supplements)," when this is a pre-clinical
| assumption. No human toxicity trials are mentioned in this
| context, and there are always MASSIVE differences when switching
| to real human studies. It might be correct, but there's no basis
| to say that based on this study.
|
| Also, the senior author owns the company. The paper has the
| hallmarks of a "pitch deck" for the drug.
|
| In short, it seems to me that the claim of "Full Neurological
| Recovery" is misleading to patients. It fails to prove that
| fixing NAD+ in humans will stop the disease, only that it works
| in mice engineered to have the disease, and only by assuming that
| their specific measure is a 1-to-1 with the clinical presentation
| of the disease. The results are likely the "best case scenario"
| presented to support the commercialization of P7C3-A20.
|
| Here is the COMMON SENSE question peer-reviews should have asked.
| Is low NAD+ the fire, or just the ashes?
|
| Why should we believe this works in humans when the last 500
| 'cures' in 5xFAD mice failed?
|
| Are you regrowing a brain, or just cleaning up a dirty one?
|
| How does one molecule fix five unconnected problems
| simultaneously? The Context: The drug fixed inflammation, blood-
| brain barrier, amyloid/tau (protein folding), and memory
| (neuronal signaling). Drugs rarely hit four distinct biological
| systems with 100% success....
|
| Where is the toxicology report that proves 'safer than
| supplements'?
| exmadscientist wrote:
| I can't upvote your comment enough.
|
| Please... people, do not get your hopes up over this one PR
| pump piece released on Christmas Day. This is not a legit
| study. (It might, perhaps, somehow, still be correct,
| perhaps... even broken clocks are right twice a day... but it's
| still not a legit study.)
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Stopped clocks.
|
| Broken clocks can be broken in ways that causes them to be up
| to and including never correct.
|
| ;)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the senior author owns the company_
|
| Unfortunately, the moment I saw reference to NAD+ I started
| looking for this. Thank you.
| briandw wrote:
| Boosting NAD has a been the focus of taking NMN supplements.
| Seems like NMN is a dud for boosting NAD. I wonder if P7C3-A20
| can be used instead?
| jadbox wrote:
| "Seems like NMN is a dud for boosting NAD" what gives you that
| notion?
| ganesh7 wrote:
| This is eyewatering. My father and grandfather died early due to
| this condition. Hope for many.
| beckerdo wrote:
| It's a useful discovery. The real proof and utility is if what
| they learned from "mouse-heimer's" can be applied to human
| Alzheimer's.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| That's so obvious I can't believe I didn't think of it, and /
| or that I haven't seen it before.
|
| Mouse-heifer's! <knee slap>
| 7thpower wrote:
| This is great news for mice who have something vaguely similar to
| Alzheimer's.
| baq wrote:
| Of which there are none except for the few we tried to
| genetically modify so they kinda get something maybe sorta
| similar
| 7thpower wrote:
| But there's good news. They're all going to be fine, except
| for the ones who aren't.
|
| Merry Christmas!
| looneysquash wrote:
| "Animals" suggests more than one kind of animal.
|
| Which animals besides mice does this cause a full neurological
| recovery in?
| cubefox wrote:
| Related: Recently another study on a mouse model had similar
| effects when using lithium orotate:
|
| https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/lithium-deficiency...
| jrpt wrote:
| There's a lot of umbrella diagnoses that would benefit from more
| specific diagnostics first. What we call Alzheimer's is probably
| actually caused by number of different causes depending on the
| person. This is true of a lot of things in medicine that get
| grouped together. That's why testing a drug in mouse models with
| all the same characteristics sometimes works but fails to
| translate into humans who have more variety amongst each other.
|
| The same is true of many diagnoses like pneumonia, cancer,
| alopecia, essential tremor: there's multiple different groups
| that would benefit from different things, and if we had better
| ways to identify the groups, we'd give them what works for them
| instead of wasting their time with the wrong treatment. As an
| example, antibiotics won't work for viral pneumonia and in
| addition to wasting the patient's time, actually harm your
| microbiome. If you had a perfect way to know which is which,
| you'd always get the right treatment.
|
| Precision medicine takes this even further.
| djmips wrote:
| Always profile before you optimize.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Always profile before you optimize_
|
| Not necessarily. Often, treatment and testing can be done in
| parallel.
|
| In many cases, the treatment is also a test. Every time you
| apply topical antibiotics to a cut, you're testing for
| antibiotic resistance.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| I had read their comment as "accurately diagnose before
| treating"
|
| It's not "House" where you guess something, provide a
| treatment, watch as things get worse, then change diagnosis
| in the real world is it?
| awesome_dude wrote:
| I recall a University of Washington (I think it was) where they
| were saying they had found Schizophrenia to be a bucket
| diagnosis, and had discovered that multiple sets of genes were
| working together in specific testable ways such that there were
| >4 sub types of Schizophrenia each with its own set of
| symptoms, and ability to respond to different medications.
|
| The researcher did a follow-up study to confirm their thesis,
| but I've never seen anyone else follow up on those studies
| (family with Schizophrenia makes me acutely aware of
| developments in that field)
|
| https://source.washu.edu/2014/09/schizophrenia-not-a-single-...
|
| oh, would you look at that - a newer study
| https://biology.ucdavis.edu/news/discovery-hints-genetic-bas...
| nandomrumber wrote:
| You're right, disease labels aren't diagnostic.
|
| Many disease labels just mean inflammation-of-a tissue / organ.
|
| Worth noting that some viral inflections of the respiratory
| tract will have a bacterial secondary, where an either
| commensal bacteria has over proliferated or a pathogenic
| bacteria has started to get a hold, and treating the bacterial
| secondary can help the patient better fight the viral primary.
| xvxvx wrote:
| Anytime I see headlines like these, I think of the countless
| animals tortured to death. The sheer level of suffering, all for
| this Frankenstein nonsense. 90-95% of drugs that appear safe and
| effective in animal tests ultimately fail in human trials. They
| mention mice, but there are likely other animals involved, like
| dogs. Animals deliberately bred with crippling diseases, all for
| fame and fortune.
|
| More than 110 million animals are killed in the United States
| each year in experiments. I'd rather just accept Alzheimer's than
| be complicit in this evil.
| kingofmen wrote:
| Do you eat meat?
| xvxvx wrote:
| No.
| ssstt wrote:
| If you don't want to be complicit you can always stop taking
| any drug
| xvxvx wrote:
| I take none and haven't in over a decade.
| fredoliveira wrote:
| > all for fame and fortune
|
| I understand the compassion for animals, of course, but not
| this sentence. Advancing science is not "all for fame or
| fortune". If it cures people, I can see it. I too would love a
| world without animal suffering, but I'd also love to not be
| literally seeing (and I just came back from my parents') my dad
| slip more and more into nothingness at the hand of this stupid
| disease.
| xvxvx wrote:
| Naivety is living in a world where scientists and
| pharmaceutical companies just want to end suffering. Please.
| NotGMan wrote:
| Given the choice between a drug saving the life of my (future)
| child or sacrificing animals I know what I'd choose.
| xvxvx wrote:
| I'd choose the animals over your child too.
| bilsbie wrote:
| GOOD point by my wife, how does this affect those with apoe4
| status. And also is there any connection with the recent lithium
| findings.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Yet another "in mice" breakthrough. The cerebral cortex of a
| mouse has around 8-14 million neurons while in those humans there
| are more than 10-15 billion. So scale this outcome by literally
| 1000x more neurons and wake me when the chimps are remembering
| how to hold a long conversation.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Yet another "in mice" breakthrough_
|
| I don't get this take. Like yes, we aren't mice, and everything
| that works in mice won't work in humans. But loads of things
| that worked in mice _did_ wind up working in humans, which is
| why most groundbreaking drugs over the past decades were first
| explored in mice, which is why we continue to use mouse models.
| jmward01 wrote:
| Not my field, but I think a big point here is this isn't purely
| researching into Amyloid plaques. It is way past time to explore
| many other possibilities and it is promising to see research in a
| different direction. This isn't to say Amyloid plaques aren't
| worthy of research, but when you slam into a wall for a few
| decades then maybe you should look in different directions now
| and again.
| tbenst wrote:
| A key challenge with Alzheimer's is there is no good mouse model
| for the disease. While some approximate the phenotype, it's not
| clear that the disease model as commonly studied in mice matches
| well with mechanisms of the human disease. There's some thinking
| in the field that this could be a key reason why so many
| treatments have appeared very promising in mice and haven't
| panned out in humans.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I really don't see how you can make an animal model of something
| you don't fully understand in humans.
|
| Just because you made an animal have similar symptoms doesn't
| mean the animal has Alzheimer's!
|
| I suspect that animal models hinder rather than help science
| progress because most of the animals models will turn out to be
| entirely wrong.
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