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Unlocking Alzheimer's Mysteries
Animalicious Cow writes "A shunt implanted in the skull of a patient with Alzheimer's could be the first treatment that actually fixes what's broken in the brain rather than simply masking symptoms of the debilitating disease."
Except that it's wrong. New brain cells can form in adult brains.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Considering that the jury is apparently still out on aluminum contributing or causing alzheimer's disease, this is an interesting concept.
This sig no verb.
1) cerebro-
/
2) injecting anything into brain through catheter would cause HUGE risk of infecion.
They just milk the brain. The system is closed (outlet into stomach) for the reason 2)
There is another disease where this approach works: hemochromatosis.
Genetic defect in hemochromatosis patients causes iron overabsorbtion, which would gradualy kill them. Bleeding these patients regularly saves their lives.
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/hemochromatosis
Now they even allow hemochromatosis patient blood to be donated to bloodbanks.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
The article does say that the shunt increases CSF production, by filtering out the offending proteins and sending them to the peritoneum. Obviously the article lacks some details of the process. For one it starts off saying that the shunt drains CSF from the brain a drop every minute. It then mentions how this process will increase CSF replenishment. My guess is that these drips are less than the increased CSF that removing the proteins provide.