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Experimental Drug Compound Found To Reverse Effects of Alzheimer's In Mice
Zothecula (1870348) writes "While there has been progress made in the fight against Alzheimer's, our understanding of the dispiriting disease remains somewhat limited, with a definitive cure yet to be found. The latest development comes at the hands of researchers from Yale's School of Medicine, who have discovered a new drug compound shown to reverse the effects of Alzheimer's in mice."
All we need now is a drug to turn humans into mice.
If I read that correctly (yeah, I RTFA) what that stuff does is facilitate the transfer of short term into long term memory.
Forget Alzheimer (please, no lame puns here), every student on this planet will want that stuff. I sure know I would've killed to get that shit to stuff all that nonsensical crap into my brain that I had to learn for a few tests that were about as interesting as watching the carpet warp during hot Summers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do mice get Alzheimer's disease in the wild? This is blatantly fraudulent 'research'.
Cars don't appear in the wild either, yet research has enabled them anyways. That is to say, I do not think you even understand what the word "fraudulent" means.
life imitates art?
You'll be old one day too, young one. Unless... do you have a red crystal in the palm of your hand?
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With so many advancements and near miraculous treatments being discovered almost daily it's never been a better time to be a mouse!
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
It's only old people who get Alzheimer's. No loss there...
And it's young people who pay for most of their care.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Unless your proposal involves turning the old people into soylent grey, there definitely is. It's a particularly slow and very, very, unpleasant way to die(not so much because of any gruesome physical symptoms as because gradual and relentless loss of assorted important congnitive functions is both terrifying and increasingly incomprehensible as you lose more of them) and makes the victim substantially dependent on caregivers some years before they otherwise might be. Very hard on the patient, very hard on their relatives, and quite expensive, often for a number of years.
No, mice don't get alzheimer's disease in the wild. They don't live long enough to. A domesticated mouse can sometimes develop dementia entirely on its own as it ages, however. Any mouse, or any creature for that matter, which happened to live long enough in the wild to develop such conditions would not survive for long without human intervention.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's only old people who get Alzheimer's. No loss there...
Unless of course you're so unfortunate to have early-onset. In which case it can start at the age of 15.
Om, nomnomnom...
Cancer doesn't impose the same kind of survivability impact that dementia does. An animal in the wild with cancer may not live much longer, but can continue to fend for itself for relatively quite a long time often almost right up until the time the disease kills them. An animal with dementia cannot even fend for itself in the wild and would die *VERY* quickly, even though the disease may not otherwise be damaging to their physical health.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
" An animal with dementia cannot even fend for itself in the wild"
Citation needed. I've seen plenty of animals with Rabies and other essential forms of dementia survive for quite a while, long enough to have been a potential vector to several thousand people.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"That information is irrevocably destroyed"
Who says there isn't a backup hiding somewhere?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
A mouse looked so stupid walking around and around in circles looking for the car keys.
An older mouse was screaming at the cheese "Do I know you?" in a mousey voice...
It was totally embarrassing.
You can always tell an article is based on junk science when it contains the words "Alzheimer's," "cancer," or "AIDS." I'd bet my last cent at least two of the researchers involved in this are implicated in fakery by next week.
And can be funny too :)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
How about this?
Simply put, such dementia would leave the animal without essential survival skills, and unless they are being cared for by people, they would die. Rabies causes irrational behavior, but does not deprive the animal of the ability of the cognitive skills necessary for survival. Certain other forms of dementia, such as Alzheimer's, which is also what this slashdot story is about, does.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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And here caring for Alzheimer's patients was one of the few up and coming employers of a large segment of the population. But I say who needs Alzheimer's? We have the House of Representatives and the republic right wing and they are ding bats enough for us. We need no more brain dead in America.
" An animal with dementia cannot even fend for itself in the wild"
Citation needed. I've seen plenty of animals with Rabies and other essential forms of dementia survive for quite a while, long enough to have been a potential vector to several thousand people.
My last dog lived to be 16 years old, which is pretty old for a medium-sized dog. We ended up putting her down because, one night something happened and she just would not stop barking. She didn't eat, didn't sleep, didn't move, just laid there constantly yelping (and not out of pain either) for three days. When we took her into the vet to put her down, even the vets could tell she wasn't herself (she would get grouchy and mean around other people-even had a bite warning sticker on her vet folder). If that's not evidence that an animal with dementia/cognitive impairment wouldn't live long in the wild I don't know what is.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Not to burst anyones bubble, but any created that doesn't eat or move will not have a very long existence.
Any creature with full Alzheimer's would not survive long either.
But as in Humans, I would imagine Alzheimer's takes a while to fully render the creature demented.
Only ones that are kept in captivity and cared for. In the wild, they die.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Soylent Grey is mice.
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Alternatively, is the mouse named Caesar?
Let's hope that this treatment works well, and is approved for human use quickly. Terry Pratchett's abilities to tie fascinating details of human experience, knowledge, and even science into an entertaining and educational story is an incredible loss to the world. Even if you only recovers enough to enjoy the well-earned adulation of his fans, the chance to thank him personally for his work is worth significant medical research.
I understand he particularly likes banana daiquiris.
Well, to argue semantics if we learned how to regrow a lost arm, we'd have "reversed" amputation even though we can never restore all the lost opportunities to scratch one's ass.
But your general point that people should not expect the alzheimer's patient to necessarily start to remember everything they have forgotten is well taken.
I'd give the word choice a 'B' in that they could have done better but reasonably intelligent people will understand what is meant.
Someone had to do it.
All this drug does it improve the conversion of short-term memory to long-term memory. This is a problem in patients suffering from Alzheimer's but no way can it regain memory stored in neurons already lost to Alzheimer's. I hope this treatment works, but it's not even clear it will stop the progression of the disease to it's ultimate conclusion.
Finally elderly mice will not have to fear this terrible disease.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
If every time I read a story starting with "_______ reversed in mice!" it ended up being an actual advancement in medicine, by now we would be immortal and immune to almost every disease.
Yet they do live long enough to get cancer, which primarily occurs in the elderly. I don't think think that your simple model of disease incidence increasing with days alive should be assumed.
This is a common mistake. Some types of cancer are primarily affecting the elderly, but some others peak at childhood, or at early adulthood, and yet others can affect a person regardless of age (glioblastoma is the most common and most feared example).
(Sorry for not providing more examples; I don't remember them from the top of my head and right now I don't have the guts for googling for cancers that kill children).
In addition, you must take into account that lab mice are all from relatively few genetical lines; this is sometimes a plus because they are genetically uniform, but they are also inbred and much more susceptible to various tumors.
A recent study has found low vitamin D levels associated with Alzheimer's disease, as well as a bunch of other ailments. It seems like modest daily supplementation with vitamin D3 might be a good idea if Alzheimer's runs in your family.
https://www.yahoo.com/health/clear-link-found-between-vitamin-d-deficiency-and-94074543072.html
What a joke it is - endless fraud from psychopaths who enjoy torturing animals all day.
One of my friends is a geneticists (in fact, more of my friends are). She is extremely sensitive, and looks very sad and distressed every time they have to kill a set of lab rats after finishing an experiment - which is exactly what the law requires them to do. They go a long way to ensure that the animal does not feel any pain at all, if possible (by the way, humans in terminal states of certain diseases would beg for such a swift and painless death - and they can't have it, again due to the law).
If they tried to set the lab rats free, or get them home, they would face criminal charges. In European Union, just having a genetically modified rat at home means a criminal charge and a hefty financial penalty (starting around 10000 Euro I believe), and it puts a definitive stop to your scientific career. Setting a GMO rat free into the city sewers or a garden would trigger a large-scale police operation and quite possibly you would be sent into jail as a bio-terrorist.
Do mice get Alzheimer's disease in the wild? This is blatantly fraudulent 'research'.
No, natural mice do not get Alzheimer's. We simulate the disease with various genetic modifications and injections of prions, in hope that the disease we artificially induced is sufficiently similar to Alzheimer's to be a usable model for finding a cure. So far, the results were poor, but we are slowly, constantly advancing, and along with accumulated data from the ill humans, and general knowledge about neuron functions, we will someday find a mechanism, and then a cure.
Yes, it is cruel to the mice. But it is the only way we know of finding a solution. This is not a purposeless torture. We are trying to save people, and these methods really produce useful results. (For example, any time you see a drug with a name ending with -amab or -omab, these are monoclonal antibodies produced from rats or mice, respectively - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...)
It's only old people who get Alzheimer's. No loss there...
Even from a strictly economical point of view, this is disputable.
"Normal" Alzheimer's can affect people as young as 40 (there are super-early, genetic-based variants that can hit even earlier, but that's in fact a different disease I think). Such a human still could provide >10 years of work, possibly qualified work, and has a family which will care about him/her, which degrades their work ability greatly (you *won't* be working as well if you haven't slept for a week due to trying to quell Dad's nightmares) - a very significant economic loss.
But let's say, for the sake of argument, that it does not appear earlier than in 60's, and that the human in that age does nothing to offer to the society, work-wise (gross oversimplification, I know). But he/she has still lots of younger social contacts, which all get depressed and stressed due to this illness. Of course, you could euthanize the affected person. But by this, you are effectively learning your society that "getting ill = getting killed". This means, on one side, that people will focus on covering any disease symptoms and trying to keep at work even when ill, from fear of being euthanized - a net economic loss - and on the other side, medicine research will effectively stop because it's cheaper - and now allowed - to euthanize a patient with any serious (albeit generally curable) disease. Not much good, even not much efficient.
Lastly, the overall people lifespan is still growing. It is possible that in the future, a 50-years old person will be, and feel, as healthy and full of energy as in 25ths. But if Alzheimer's will still be a killer in 60's, you would be losing fully-powered, fully-qualified workforce. Much loss, very bad.
All kidding aside, I hope some headway is made in this field.
I think we all hope in this, regardless of our age. And, unless we destroy ourselves in some nice world war, or unless science will be oficially banned on religious grounds, the cure will be found. Alzheimer's is no magic, there is some underlying cause, and when we find it, we will find a way to block it, although it can be technically challenging.
I personally think (but this is just a guess) that we will have to learn pretty much details of neuronal functions at the lowest biochemical level, and also about glial-neuronal interactions, because so far I tend to think that there might be some subtle glitch in metabolism, something not being cleaned up properly, which leads to disastrous buildup of unusable stuff much, much later. But I repeat, that's just a guess, there might as well be a profound, brutal defect we just did not find yet.
I have no problem remembering technical things that I learn and once I learn them once, it is very rare for me to forget. But I am finding myself, at 30, confusing the chronological order of events, repeating conversations, and thinking that I may or may not 'have already done this before'. It kind of feels like a mild cross of aphasia and alzheimer's.
In 30? Probably loss of concentration. Alzheimer's is very rare at your age, and it usually manifests in a different way. A cause for concern would be if you were losing memories or how-tos of usual, routine things, experiencing strange mood swings with bouts of confusion, not recognizing people you regularly meet, or suddenly getting lost in a town you live in for 20 years. And even then, I would suspect epilepsy. (But beware, I am not a MD...)
"That information is irrevocably destroyed"
Who says there isn't a backup hiding somewhere?
Russell's teapot would like to have a word with you.
The backup idea is, in fact, not at all stupid. Although I doubt there is some backup ready for use (if some god has it, it is improbable that he/she will yield it, provided that he/she did not so yet), a kind of a backup can be done as a precaution.
While we are still light years away from a full mind upload (of course, if we were able to do that, Alzheimer's would become just a minor nuisance), we are better and better in storing information about what a person saw, heard, and even felt internally. Provided that there is enough of this data, and we get at least a basic knowledge of how they are stored in the brain, we might be able to restore the mostly destroyed circuitry using e.g. stem cells or whatever magitech will be needed, and adapt it using the stored data to remotely resemble what it used to be.
Of course, there are lots of "ifs" and hard-to-imagine manipulation on subcellullar level, but I would consider it mildly feasible.
I'm not sure that the incentives line up in this case: Alzeimer's tends to be expensive because of the amount of care and nursing people require as their cognitive state declines; but the pharmaceutical options are sparse. People would beat down your door for the chance to pay for pills what they now pay for nursing if you had something(even if it has to be taken twice daily forever) that was suitably effective. Anyone who could would likely pay more because the disease itself is so nasty. Seems like a very lucrative position for anyone except those currently doing the nursing.
I would love to lose some of my brain, have it regrown and start over fresh. The adult brain plasticity is awful. Forgetting your wedding anniversary is a small price to pay for being able to learn a new instrument.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
And every ten years Alzheimer's organisations say that they'll have a cure in ten years time. I see some correlation with that tactic and the general lifespan of Alzheimer's patients.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
God damn beta and god damn tablet software keyboards
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman