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Unlocking Alzheimer's Mysteries

Posted by michael on Thursday April 10, 2003 @07:28AM from the new-friends-every-day dept.

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."

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Ceribro-dialysis by wowbagger · 2003-04-10 07:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

This makes me wonder if you couldn't do something along the lines of hemodialysis - slowly feed in a synthetic ceribro-spinal fluid, and then drain off the contaminated CSF.

Any doctors in the house?

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Better Symptomatic Treatment by E.+T.+Alveron · 2003-04-10 08:11 · Score: 5, Interesting

I disagree with the author's claim that this "fixes what's broken" in an alzheimer's patient.
From what I can tell, the shunt drains excess cerebrospinal fluid, which prevents (harmful) protein deposition. However it doesn't restore a healthy equilibrium of CSF production and consumption.