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Unlocking Alzheimer's Mysteries

Posted by michael on 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."

12 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Unlocking... by gregh76 · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...what?

  2. hm by TaraByte · · Score: 2, Funny

    it gives a new meaning to brain-drain.

    --
    Security is inversely proportional to the commitment of one desiring to circumvent it.
  3. Ceribro-dialysis by wowbagger · · 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?

    --
    www.eFax.com are spammers
    1. Re:Ceribro-dialysis by Muhammar · · Score: 3, Informative

      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
    2. Re:Ceribro-dialysis by Op911 · · Score: 2, Informative
      I'd have to express a hefty degree of skepticism about the purported mechanism of this kind of device in treating Alzheimer's disease. As mentioned in the article shunts are successfully used in a condition known as hydrocephalus to reduce abnormal CSF pressure in the brain which can certainly cause a dementia-like picture that can mimic Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's disease isn't just caused by evil humors... we don't know the actual pathophysiology yet and are only beginning to work it out by analyzing the debris in the aftermath of the biochemical accident that takes place. These theories of increased tau and beta amyloid deposition cascading into decreased CSF production and creating more deposition are certainly possible but they are just that - theories, and are not the primary avenues of research in Alzheimer's disease today either.

      More important to address is the implication in the Wired article that there was a benefit in this treatment from the trial they mention. (1) This trial was not an randomized controlled trial powered to determine efficacy or lack thereof but rather a trial to determine safety. (2) There was only a trend to benefit that was not statistically significant. (3) Most importantly the treatment group had 3 patients excluded from the analysis for various reasons and were not included in the final analysis. In other words, the statistical analysis performed was not an intention-to-treat analysis which is the gold standard we use in looking at the validity of the result of a trial. Were an intention to treat analysis performed there very well might have been no benefit seen. The editorial in the journal where the original trial was published expressed skepticism, although it also encouraged the researcher to continue with their work and pursue a larger trial with more patients to better assess benefit.

      In other words, this treatment is barely in alpha-testing and the follow-up trial to be performed by the Eunoe people will determine if it will see the light of day.

      Having said that this trial is a breath of fresh air from the ongoing pursuit of cholinesterase inhibitor medications and it would be a major breakthrough it it works. I'm just not going to hold my breath.

  4. Re:interesting by PD · · Score: 3, Informative

    Except that it's wrong. New brain cells can form in adult brains.

    --
    If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  5. Yikes by barakn · · Score: 3, Funny
    I found myself wondering how the CSF was transported all the way from the brain to the peritoneum, and then I saw the diagram of the tube that runs underneath the skin.

    "Wow, grandpa, you're ripped. Look at that vein in your pectoral muscle.... wait, that's not a vein! Gross!"

    I hope they perfect the anti-amyloid vaccines.

    --
    "I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
    1. Re: Yikes by Bowling+Moses · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not going to happen. Vaccines work against viruses; Alzheimers disease is thought to be caused by the formation and accumulation of amyloid plaques between neurons. The amyloid plaque itself is a great big gamish of improperly folded proteins. Alzheimer's patients can't properly dispose of them, or perhaps the systems that do dispose of them are overtaxed and the problem is in why they form in such size (I don't work on Alzheimer's--the 2nd one's just a guess). A couple other diseases have at some stage a buildup of misfolded proteins; Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) aka "Lou Gehrig's Disease" is one such example, multiple sclerosis is another.

    2. Re: Yikes by barakn · · Score: 2, Informative

      Perhaps you should have looked at the second page of the article. It briefly mentions the trial of a vaccine against amyloid. Unfortunately some people died, but the treatment may still be helping the other recipients in the study. Your characterization of a vaccine is incomplete. They also work against bacteria (Anthrax, Botulism, Cholera, Tetanus, etc.) and have been employed against cancer (with limited results to date). Antisera are commonly used against toxins from Black Widows, snakes, etc.. And work continues on vaccines against some of the eukaryotic diseases like malaria. Vaccines have a great medical potential that has only been partially realized.

      --
      "I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
  6. Fascinating idea... by dacarr · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
  7. Better Symptomatic Treatment by E.+T.+Alveron · · 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.

    1. Re:Better Symptomatic Treatment by p7 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.