Slashdot Mirror
Brain Implants Relieve Alzheimer's Damage
Genetically engineered cells implanted in mice have cleared away toxic plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease. The animals were sickened with a human gene that caused them to develop, at an accelerated rate, the disease that robs millions of elderly people of their memories. After receiving the doctored cells, the brain-muddling plaques melted away. If this works in humans, old age could be a much happier time of life.
It's a fantastic time to be a mouse. Mouse with cancer? No problem. Mouse with alzheimers? No problem. Mouse with diabetes? Go ahead and have that Snicker bar, we have the cure for what ails ya.
I'm normally quite sarcastic when posting.
Not now. Alzheimer's Disease is one of the most horrifying maladies faced in societies where people live long enough to suffer from it.
I hope that this research pans out into practical treatment. Being betrayed by the body is terrible enough later in life.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neprilysin
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Oh yes you do. Maybe not any more by the time you're almost completely gone. And also not when it all first starts (slowly). But in between there is a period when you're aware of what's happening and still lucid enough to understand. That phase is the true torture period for the person affected.
Linux user since early January 1992.
1.) Granted, I'm 34, so I'm not talking from experience, but from what I gather old age is already a happier time of life.
2.) If I'm interpreting the sentence correctly, the sentence is implying that most of the time when people reach old age they get Alzheimer's. If that is true, then I need a reality check because I didn't know that.
I feel strongly that your mind is the most important part of your body. Its truly what makes you unique,. This research progress is great news. I just wish there was some way to get my Father treatment. Someone once told me that one of the toughest time for a child is when he realizes his parents are mortal. Over the last couple of years I have had to watch a brilliant man slowly disintegrate into a shell of his former self (all the while knowing what was happening to him and that he really had no where to escape to). If you have a heart attack, you sometimes can do something about it, with better lifestyle eating etc. or even cancer, you can fight it with therapy and perhaps have the hope to be free of it. Not the case with this disease, and the worst part is that you know its happening to you as its slowly robs you and your loved ones of your last sanctuary, yourself. Dealing with this first hand has certainly had an effects on me and my outlook on life in ways that were not apparent to me at first. Any kind of progress against this disease simply makes my day.
One should wonder if people will demand longer careers (past their 70s) to pay for this extension of life too.
As socialized medicine seems just around the corner and the social security system is already in danger, I would go so far as to say longer careers should be strongly encouraged, and the social security age should be slowly raised. To pay for all of this we are going to need more cash going into the common government funds, and I don't fancy paying a 50% tax/S.S. rate to cover a bunch of Baby Boomers who retired at 60. As the infirmities of age are pushed back so should the accepted retirement age be pushed back. We already spend the first 20 years of our lives not contributing materially to society, I don't think we should also spend the last 20 years on an open ended vacation unless it can be paid for 100% out of pocket. While I think this is a wonderful medical advancement (there is a history of Alzheimer's in my family), it does in a way add to the impending problems the western world faces in it's growing elderly population.
We are all just people.
First off, here's the actual article, which was published in PLoS Medicine (meaning free access for everyone, yay).
Whether this accomplishment (and it is a pretty cool accomplishment) will be meaningful for people is very uncertain. First of all, Alzheimer's is not a positive diagnosis, that is you diagnose it by the absence of other explanations for observed behavior. So you don't actually have a way of confirming that the mental defects of a patient are *really* due to a-beta deposits. Unlike many diseases, we can't (yet) test blood or tissue or do imaging studies to confirm a-beta deposits (though there is tons of effort being spent on developing such tests). So you'd have to decide to do a pretty serious procedure on (generally) elderly people in less than ideal health on the basis of a flimsy diagnosis. It might well be worth it, but it is a big question.
Moreover, though, we don't really know what causes the neurodegeneration associated with amyloid diseases. We know that deposits or a-beta or tau tangles (or light-chain or huntingtin, or SOD or transthyretin (which was the topic of my thesis work) or whatever amyloidogenic protein you like) correlate well with neurodegeneration. But whether those are the cause or not is still a very open question. In fact there is plenty of research around that suggests that amyloid deposits themselves are not damaging, but the precursors in the aggregation pathway are the real culprits. Some have even suggested that amyloid is a more or less inert structure that can be used to segregate potentially dangerously unstable proteins away from the rest of the cell.
So, supposing this treatment does everything perfectly, chops up a-beta and disintegrates plaques, *and* we can deliver it to correctly diagnosed patients, we still might not even be hitting the right target.
Not to be too down on this topic, but we are still quite a long way from a treatment, much less a cure.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
My greatest fear in life is forgetting important things - forgetting what makes me wake up every morning, forgetting the good in people, forgetting those close to me. I know some old people for whom I'd gladly shed off years of my life if it meant they could touch more people the way they touched me. Alzheimer's has always been the one thing that I've prayed they could avoid. So, I ask you Slashdotters - do you know of any way I can help here? Can I donate money to this cause somehow? What can _I_ do?
Death with dignity is an important right. To me, it's almost as compelling as the possibility of living longer with dignity. That's why this research is so important.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
First off, that's not exactly true, as a couple other commenters have indicated.
Secondly: it's not all about you. I said it's a terrible disease for society. That means not only the people who descend into grey terrors and death, but the loved ones who must bear with them through their suffering. People who will never suffer from Alzheimer's benefit from this research as well.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
How about spending every day convinced that you're eight years old, and that your (long dead) parents have abandoned you in a strange place?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
If you want Alzheimers patients "to die earlier with dignity" then you'll have to start killing them, like witches, at the first sign. Because for most of them it's the first thing to seriously go wrong. And for most of them it develops very, very slowly, sliding down a slope where by the time you might wish they'd say "Kill me now, please," any such rational choice is finally behind them.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Your mind seems awfully warped. Recognize this for what it is: an intriguing discovery with the possibility of solving a problem. If on the whole people are worse off for the treatment, we should rationally expect that it won't become widespread. So stop being a dick and just say 'hey this is really cool.'
I used to be constantly pessimistic like this. I'm trying to get over it. Solving problems / learning more truths == good.
-knewter
From your skin. And not 'brains' but connective tissue cells (fibroblasts) that are easy to grow.
It sounds pretty good but I am afraid it will not cure the disease. Permanent damage and the tissue/functionality lost are not restored, so I am afraid we would still need stem cells for a proper AD cure.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
There's been a method for removing amyloid plaques from the brain since 2002. Elan Pharmaceuticals produced a vaccine which stimulated the immune system to produce antibodies against amyloid. Unfortunately, it's a cure, and cures are bad for business, so Elan abandoned it.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
Sadly Hollywood and TV make it look like Alzheimer's is nothing more then memory loss.
I live with my parents now to take care of my dad who has early onset late stage Alzheimer's. he most def knows something is wrong with him. He is unable to speak and it frustrates him to no end. He can't find the bathroom and we (me and my mom) have to figure out that he needs it and lead him to it. Even the most basic things like putting on his pants is a nightmarish exp for him.
Its not the watching some one fade away that makes things hard on the family. Its watching someone exp hell on earth and not being able to do a damn thing about it
My grandfather passed away from Alzheimer's complications this Summer after living on his own for around 5 years. He sure as hell knew he had it. As recently as last October he was still in amazing physical shape, running daily to the gym, working out like a maniac, and running back to his home. Even at his old age, he could still do more pull ups than I can at 22 (and I'm no slouch, 28 palms forward from dead hang, he beat me with 33).
We noticed the first signs around Christmas. He began to act in an odd way and mixed up some of our names. We insisted he go to a doctor, who then told us he was so far along in the disease that he must have been suffering from it for at least a year. When we confronted him about it he told us he was embarrassed and did not want us to take his freedom away. It was amazing how quickly he declined in the next few months.
I was always very close with him, he actually bought me the truck I currently drive and has helped pay for some of my college. The last time I saw him he didn't know who I was, and asked me to tell him about myself. I talked to him for around four hours recounting my life and the times we had spent together. At the end he started crying because he said he wanted to remember my parents and me, but couldn't. When we left that day he told us he didn't want to live anymore, and died three days later.
The reason Alzheimer's is such a horrific disease is because it is such a tarnish on the life of the individual. My grandfather was in the Navy during World War II. He was an officer and was actually present in the room during the signing of the official surrender terms on the USS Missouri on V-J day. He spent the next 15 years as a stock car racer, and then owned a chain of mechanics shops for 20 years. He raised three successful children and had several grandchildren he was very close with. But when he died, he had absolutely zero recollection of any of this.
I just know that I don't want to go out and achieve all of my goals in life only to reach an age at which I cannot recall any of them.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
wow, that's a shockingly ignorant statement. Commenting on Slashdot on graphic cards when you no nothing about it is one thing, but on fatal diseases is a different kind of thing, dude.
A 'bit frustrating'? Most people are diagnosed a year or so into onset, but there's no real way of knowing when the disease starts. For many patients, there's literally (like, 5) years of knowing a) you have a disease that is 100% fatal and that you will gradually forget the names and faces of the people you love. b) you will eventually become a terrible burden on those same people, you will treat them badly and they will get to watch as you regress to less than a child. c) gradually losing all the mental faculties that you take for granted every day, knowing exactly why for several years.
It's terrible, frightening death sentence where the patient's personality is dismantled piece-by-piece, moving slowly to death, with their families watching helplessly on.
I've worked with patients with a number of chronic and fatal diseases (cancer, AIDS, etc...) and nothing would scare me more than a diagnosis of Alzheimer's.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
Both my grandmothers have/had Alzheimers. The first couple of years they still recognized us, though their short term memory went within months and got to the point where at any visit you'd have to remind them who you were several times (then they'd still recognize us) and they'd ask the same questions over and over again and promptly forget the conversation.
But then, pretty soon they were unable to recognize anyone. Including their spouses who they'd lived with for decades; including their children.
Beyond that it took a couple of years before they eventually lost the ability to speak, and were sitting around just looking. We've been "lucky" - neither of them got aggressive. Aggression is a common effect of Alzheimers.
My paternal grandmother was in hospital for a couple of years with some level of memory, and then sat like a vegetable in a nursing home for about eight years before she died. She was unable to speak, and recognized noone during all of those eight years.
But the worst part is that when we found out they had Alzheimers, you could see the symptoms going back several years - suddenly lots of strange incidents made sense -, and they must have known something was badly wrong, but tried to hide it. Alzheimers scare the shit out of people and a lot of people getting it try to hide their memory loss as best they can because they're ashamed or scared until it gets so bad they can't function.
Frankly, if I get Alzheimers and there's still not a cure, I hope I realize early enough to kill myself.
Both my grandmothers went down that route. One of them managed to hide it from her husband until he was meant to go to hospital for a minor operation. Then her world collapsed, because she knew she wouldn't be able to handle things alone while he was away, and she refused to get out of bed, and she never did again - she lived another ten years with rapidly declining mental faculties and rapidly accelerating memory loss, but was certainly aware of it for another year or two.
The other, we realized after she was diagnosed, had been hiding her declining memory for years by excusing any memory problem by claiming she had "just taken pain medication" for some of her other health problems. Others hide it by writing notes to assist them, or learning to talk and ask questions in ways designed to avoid admitting they've forgotten something.
Remember those horrible moments in school, when you'd forgotten something very obvious and got asked about it, and knew or thought everyone else would think you were an idiot if you answered wrongly? Now imagine every conversation you have for several years being like that.
Alzheimers is associated with a lot of depression and also with a lot of really aggressive behavior for those reasons.
Neither of my grandmothers seemed depressed about it for long after they were diagnosed. But by then they'd started declining so rapidly, and lost so much of their memory, that they were essentially "gone" - their lives were reduced to five minute sliding windows of attention combined with some remnants of their long term memory, and they quickly lost that too.
Those weren't the horrible years for them. They five or so years before that were the bad ones, and we only realized how bad it was once we got the diagnosis and started thinking back to how they'd behaved over those preceding years.
But for both of them they were terrified for weeks or months around the time when their functional level got so low that they needed to be taken into care. My grandfather on my moms side had to struggle for a couple of months to get my grandmother to agree to even see a doctor when they both knew what was happening, and had to struggle for further weeks to get her admitted, as she kept refusing.