A cure for Alzheimer's? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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By jimjam
#14823493
A "characteristic" of Alzheimer's is "tangles" among the brain cells. Brain tissue of people in their 90's who have died and continued to experience clear thinking has been studied and many of them had the same tangles but ......... no Alzheimer's. A theory is being explored that a type of cell in the brain that's job is to attack brain parasites is now unemployed due to the removal of such parasites from our modern society. These "attack cells", with no parasites to attack, will attack brain cell tangles that appear to be a normal part of the aging process. A gene, ApoE4, is what activates these "attack cells" and not everyone has this gene.

Could Alzheimer's be caused by the body's own immune system attacking the body it was supposed to protect?
By Decky
#14823527
Suntzu wrote:I thinking big pharma is not looking for a cure . . .

. . . they are looking for a treatment.


Just like with AIDS and asthma and all sorts of things, the public has access to the treatments and not the cures (which of course exist in the underground labs and are available only to the ZOG elite).
#14823559
Suntzu wrote:I thinking big pharma is not looking for a cure . . . . . . they are looking for a treatment.
Honestly, corporations screw up science. Its an accepted fact. They can't even come up with a proper treatment. I have a very poor understanding of Alzheimer's but I could postulate how a treatment could work biochemically.
#14823568
While that's certainly a theory people like, fundamentally the issue isn't a lack of will to cure disease like this it's a lack of tools.

Just because you've identified a gene that might be involved doesn't mean you can just cure it without decades of effort developing whole tools we don't have yet. We've been working on gene therapy cures for things like cancer for decades now and are only just beginning to see muted success in a handful of trials for a handful of cancers.

The sad truth is that it's just easier to treat symptoms than cure underlying causes because we already have the tools to find compunds that block or activate various things in the body. We don't have the ability to fundamentally and permanantly modify the body though.
User avatar
By jimjam
#14823605
I have a particular interest as my Mom died a slow and brutal death from Alzheimer's. Here is the entire article:

In 2011, Ben Trumble emerged from the Bolivian jungle with a backpack containing hundreds of vials of saliva. He had spent six weeks following indigenous men as they tramped through the wilderness, shooting arrows at wild pigs. The men belonged to the Tsimane people, who live as our ancestors did thousands of years ago — hunting, foraging and farming small plots of land. Dr. Trumble had asked the men to spit into vials a few times a day so that he could map their testosterone levels. In return, he carried their kills and helped them field-dress their meat — a sort of roadie to the hunters.

Dr. Trumble wanted to find out whether the hunters who successfully shot an animal would be rewarded with a spike in testosterone. (They were.) As a researcher with the Tsimane Health and Life History Project, he had joined a long-running investigation into human well-being and aging in the absence of industrialization. That day when he left the jungle, he stumbled across a new and more urgent question about human health. He dropped his backpack, called his mom and heard some terrible news: His 64-year-old uncle had learned he had dementia, probably Alzheimer’s.

In just a few short years, his uncle, a vibrant former lawyer, would stop speaking, stop eating and die. “I couldn’t help my uncle,” Dr. Trumble said, but he was driven to understand the disease that killed him. He wondered: Do the Tsimane suffer from Alzheimer’s disease like we do? And if not, what can we learn from them about treating or preventing dementia?

“There is really no cure yet for Alzheimer’s,” Dr. Trumble told me. “We have nothing that can undo the damage already done.” Why, he wondered, had billions of dollars and decades of research yielded so little? Perhaps major clues were being missed.

Dr. Trumble was trained as an anthropologist, and his field — evolutionary medicine — taught him to see our surroundings as a blip in the timeline of human history. He thinks it’s a problem that medical research focuses almost exclusively on “people who live in cities like New York or L.A.” Scientists often refer to these places as “Weird” — Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic — and point out that our bodies are still designed for the not-Weird environment in which our species evolved. Yet we know almost nothing about how dementia affected humans during the 50,000 years before developments like antibiotics and mechanized farming. Studying the Tsimane, Dr. Trumble believes, could shed light on this modern plague.

The Tsimane suffer from high infant-mortality rates, but those who reach adulthood live about as long as most other people, making it possible to measure their health outcomes up to age 90 and beyond. The Tsimane Project researchers have spent more than 15 years following their volunteers and providing medical treatment. They’ve found that Tsimane differ from the rest of us in many ways. For example, they have the cleanest arteries of any population that has ever been studied, meaning that they may be largely immune to heart disease.

Dr. Trumble was not the first member of the Tsimane Project to wonder about dementia in this population. In 2002, one of the group’s founders, Michael Gurven, began testing mental fitness by asking older people to do puzzles. This and other cognitive-performance data piled up until 2015 — the year that Dr. Trumble’s uncle died. That was when Dr. Trumble, Dr. Gurven and other researchers decided to dive into it.

Dr. Trumble was particularly interested in the ApoE4 gene, often called the Alzheimer’s gene. Americans who carry two copies of the gene are more than 10 times as likely to develop the late-onset form of the disease. Dr. Trumble found something startling when he looked into the Tsimane data: Many of those with a copy of the gene seemed to perform better on the cognitive tests.

He mulled this paradox in his sunny lab back at Arizona State University. He had just returned from another trip to the Tsimane settlements, and a bit of Bolivia had come with him: an intestinal infection from the campylobacter bacteria and two nasty species of E. coli. “I got so sick that I almost missed my wedding,” he said. This was not his first encounter with tropical parasites. Years before he had noticed what looked like a zit on his nose. When it kept growing, he realized it was a flesh-eating parasite called leishmania. Chemotherapy saved his nose, and perhaps his life.

“Getting parasitic infections gave me perspective,” he said. At least 70 percent of the Tsimanes are infected with parasites — worms in their guts, invaders burrowing into their skin — at any given time. The same was likely true of our ancestors. He began to wonder: Could these infections change the way that genes affect our bodies?

Perhaps the ApoE4 gene provided a survival advantage in ancient environments. Today only about a quarter of us have a single copy of the ApoE4 gene, and only about two in a hundred carry a double dose. But DNA analysis of ancient bones shows that thousands of years ago, the ApoE4 genotype was ubiquitous in humans. The gene — which helps to generate cholesterol — might have been a crucial step in the development of our big, energy-hungry brains, and it may have played a key role in defending those brains from pathogenic invaders.

Dr. Trumble then looked at the data on the cognitive health of all the Tsimane volunteers who had tested positive for parasites. Sure enough, he found that Tsimane with infections were more likely to maintain their mental fitness if they carried one or two copies of the ApoE4 gene; for them, the “Alzheimer’s gene” provided an advantage. For the minority who’d managed to elude parasitic infection, however, the opposite was true, and the ApoE4 gene was connected with cognitive decline, just as it is for people in industrialized countries.

“Humans co-evolved with a number of different parasites, but today, in our sedentary city life, we’ve removed those parasites from the mix,” Dr. Trumble said. This could be what transformed the gene from an advantage into a liability.

As it happens, these findings dovetail with some new research from university labs. In papers released in 2016 and 2017, scientists looked at dementia in a new way — not just as a disease that results from the gradual breakdown of our cells, but as a disorder in which the brain turns against itself.

Years ago, while reporting a story about the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, I had a chance to peer through a microscope at a slice of brain collected from a patient who’d died of Alzheimer’s disease. The tissue was pocked with amyloid plaques that resembled black clouds. I also spied the tau tangles that look like hair clogging a drain and are characteristic of Alzheimer’s pathology.

For decades, most researchers have agreed that these plaques and tangles are the key malefactors of dementia, and that if you could clear them from the brains of patients, you would halt or reverse illness. Researchers have been especially focused on finding a drug that could erase amyloid plaques, and we now have dozens of compounds that do that in mice.

But this approach has led to failure in humans. Even when drugs can clear the plaques in patients’ brains, the disease continues to wreak damage.

Now some scientists believe that the focus on amyloid plaques might have been a mistake. Instead of looking at what goes wrong, they’re trying to understand what goes right.

Changiz Geula, a professor of neuroscience at Northwestern University, has been studying brain tissue collected from people who died at age 90 or older. He found that some people who die with sharp minds have brains that are clogged with the gunk associated with Alzheimer’s pathology. That means it’s possible to have an “Alzheimer’s brain” but no dementia. Dr. Geula believes that in cases like this, some actor in the brain — call it the opposite of Alzheimer’s — is protecting neurons from damage. We still don’t know what it is.

One candidate might be the astrocytes, cells that support the neurons and synapses, keeping them healthy even in the presence of plaques and tangles. In a 2017 paper in Nature, Stanford University researchers described how these usually peaceable cells can flip into a “killer mode,” becoming assassins that spew out toxins and destroy the very cells they once nursed.

According to Shane Liddelow, one of the authors of the paper, this Jekyll-and-Hyde personality of the astrocytes likely developed thousands of years ago to fend off the infections that invaded the brains of our ancestors. At the first sign of trouble, the astrocytes go on the attack, destroying everything in their path — including sometimes healthy brain tissue. Neurons can become “innocent bystanders in this protective killing effort,” Dr. Liddelow explained.

Nowadays, since most of us live in more sterile environments, this army in our brain is no longer busy fighting pathogens, and so it responds instead — often far too vigorously — to the amyloid plaques and tangles that are a part of normal aging.

“Ten years ago, very few scientists were looking at whether the immune system was related to Alzheimer’s, but that question has just exploded,” Dr. Liddelow said. “At every scientific meeting I’m at, everyone’s talking about this question: Why are some people with lots of amyloid plaques — the people who, according to our models, should get Alzheimer’s — protected from this runaway immune response? I think the answer will come from looking at immune cells of humans around the world living in different environments.”

I asked Dr. Liddelow whether he was familiar with the Tsimane research. He admitted that he was not — the field of evolutionary biology is distant from his own. But he said the hypothesis that the ApoE4 gene evolved to protect our brains from the effects of parasitic infection made perfect sense. “That’s absolutely in line with what we found. For our ancestors, an ApoE4 gene could have been beneficial,” Dr. Liddelow said, in part because it would have helped the astrocytes go on the attack.

Dr. Liddelow, who just took a job as assistant professor at New York University, is now setting up his own lab to test out that theory. He believes that this new focus will lead to “a rapid production of effective treatments.”

Dr. Trumble has hopes that his work will eventually lead to treatments as well. These days cancer scientists are brewing up designer viruses that help the body attack tumors. Why not designer parasites?

Soon after I first interviewed Dr. Trumble, he mailed some of his own saliva to a testing service to find out whether he had the ApoE4 genotype. Recently he received an answer: He carries one copy of the ApoE4 gene. For most Americans, that would mean an elevated risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Of course, Dr. Trumble — who still spends months each year sleeping in a tent, eating wild meat and drinking river water — is no ordinary American.

I asked whether he thought his past infections had inoculated him against damage in his brain.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m definitely not going to run out and infect myself with more parasites, since the science isn’t there yet” to show that these infections could be used as a therapeutic. “I definitely don’t want people to read this and go out and try to infect themselves,” he added. “Parasites can be very unpleasant or dangerous in their own right.”

But, he said, “I certainly hope, before I get to age 80, we are able to figure out the mechanism” behind a pathogenic therapy.

Perhaps that would mean a drug for people who carry the ApoE4 gene, one that would mimic the effects of a parasite without incurring the damage of an infection — a kind of muzzle for the brain’s immune system that would keep cells like the astrocytes from attacking healthy neurons.

Still, Dr. Trumble and the rest of the research team will need to gather more data before they can answer even the most basic questions: What is the rate of dementia in the Tsimane population? Are certain parasites more beneficial to the brain while others are harmful? And which humans are the most likely to receive a cognitive benefit from infection?

If the Tsimane do hold the keys to a cure, Dr. Trumble and his colleagues have no time to waste. “We have researchers in the field right now collecting data,” he told me. “They’re way upriver,” in a settlement far off the grid. Yet Dr. Trumble gets frequent updates: He uses Skype to call into the Bolivian field office, where a radio relays crackly messages from his colleagues in the jungle. This jerry-built system has sped up the research process, but it also presages a time in which the Tsimane Project’s mission will need to change.

Cellphones, canned food and other artifacts of modern life are seeping into the Tsimane communities. “This may be our last chance to understand whether chronic conditions of aging like Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease have always impacted humanity, or whether they’re connected with industrialization,” Dr. Trumble said.

The Tsimane, he fears, are becoming weird like us.
#14823613
@jimjam Very interesting, another way our defenses against prehistorical threats backfire in the modern world. Of course there is no data yet, but I'm willing to hypothesize that a modern diet, while not directly promoting the ApoE4 gene don't help. The closest parallel to this study I can think of is another one done where Eskimo tribes maintained relatively healthy teeth despite no dental care, but when they were exposed to modern western foods, only then did they suffer from cavities and such. In general, the amount of sugar in the processed western diet is shocking. In fact modern science shows that sugar is the main driver of obesity -- not fat. Aside from the artificial trans version, fats aren't that bad and do appear in diets historically (as opposed to extensive amounts of sugar). But sugars cause obesity by increasing fat storage, making one continue to feel hungry, and so on. Researchers can only guess the amount of conditions enabled or promoted by the modern diet.
User avatar
By jimjam
#14823708
MememyselfandIJK wrote:In general, the amount of sugar in the processed western diet is shocking. In fact modern science shows that sugar is the main driver of obesity -- not fat.

Corporate Food has actual laboratories where addictive foods are "invented". The goal has nothing to do with coming up with healthy food. The goal is addiction using various addictive drugs the primary ones which are sugar and salt. Such addiction will, it is thought, cause people to not only come back over and over for their slow motion poison but will repeatedly over eat to the bursting point. Good for the profits...........

Image
This person will experience bad health and an early death due to her addiction to Corporate Food.

During the second quarter of 2015 the American Beverage Association spent $15,300,000 to lobby against releasing Dietary Guidelines for Americans by the USDA which urged, among other things, less sugar in America's diet.
#14823722
Look at the sodium content of your soft drink. The only reason for it is so your thirst will not be quenched, as far as I can tell.
User avatar
By Suntzu
#14823766
One Degree wrote:Look at the sodium content of your soft drink. The only reason for it is so your thirst will not be quenched, as far as I can tell.


I just looked at my soft drink, generic Diet Coke.

It contains no sodium. :D
#14823767
Weird. I drink 7 ounce regular coke and it has 45 mg.

Edit: generic = not evil?
User avatar
By jimjam
#14825076
I think the award for "most health destroying" food/drink goes to 7-Eleven's "Double Gulp" @ 6.64 ounces of sugar (Approaching a half POUND of sugar @.415 lb). This garbage should be illegal right in there with heroin. I personally stopped drinking American sodas years ago.

This obviously is off topic but, perhaps, a dispensation will be granted. I think it is very interesting to see the garbage Americans are mindlessly dumping into their bodies.
#14836886
jimjam wrote:A "characteristic" of Alzheimer's is "tangles" among the brain cells. Brain tissue of people in their 90's who have died and continued to experience clear thinking has been studied and many of them had the same tangles but ......... no Alzheimer's. A theory is being explored that a type of cell in the brain that's job is to attack brain set monitor parasites is now unemployed due to the removal of such parasites from our modern society. These "attack cells", with no parasites to attack, will attack brain cell tangles that appear to be a normal part of the aging process. A gene, ApoE4, is what activates these "attack cells" and not everyone has this gene.

Could Alzheimer's be caused by the body's own immune system attacking the body it was supposed to protect?

No, i don't think so. It may be because of the mental or physical reason
#14837002
If you haven't seen it yet, go to YouTube.Com and search for a docco entitled Super Size Me. A little slow, but it's frightening how quickly this guy's health went south by eating only McDonald's for a month
#14837012
To be at least a little fair, if you ate nothing but homemade burgers and deep fried potato bits with lots of homemade sugary drinks and ice cream you would probably get pretty sick after a month. :lol:

The problem is not McDonald per se, people are aware McDonald is not healthy. The problem is access and cost to and of better food. Even in a super market it can often be cheaper and certainly far easier to buy crap food there too. I don't dissagree that we need to work to improve the situation but I find that stuff like "super size me" makes a lot of people think that the problem is mcdonalds when in reality the problem is far deeper and far more complex than that.

Also I'm pretty skeptical that Alzheimer is a food access issue. We know of genes that show an increased likely hood of development and there seems to be a good chance it's an autoimmune disorder or a regulatory disorder not a nutritional one.
User avatar
By Ter
#14837203
Many of the "breakthroughs" in Alzheimer and cancer research are in my opinion merely requests for more funding.
At this moment, nobody has any proof of what starts Alzheimer and there is no medicine that effectively blocks or slows the disease.

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