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Researchers Find Genetic Cause For Alzheimer's, Possible Method To Reverse It (upi.com)
schwit1 quotes UPI: Scientists at an independent biomedical research institution have reported a monumental breakthrough: The cause of the primary genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, and a possible cure for the disease. Researchers at Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco identified the primary genetic risk factor for the disease, a gene called apoE4... Their findings were published this week in the journal Nature Medicine... By treating human apoE4 neurons with a structure corrector, it eliminated the signs of Alzheimer's disease, restored normal function to the cells and improved cell survival.
The study's senior investigator says he's already working with a San Francisco pharmaceutical startup to develop the approach and move towards clinical trials, adding that "we are working to accelerate the timeline as much as possible."
The study's senior investigator says he's already working with a San Francisco pharmaceutical startup to develop the approach and move towards clinical trials, adding that "we are working to accelerate the timeline as much as possible."
Any such article sounds encouraging, but from the article linked there is no way to gain any sense of how likely this 'new' information will lead to a cure, if it is indeed even correct.
Alzheimer's is a big deal, so if this is correct we'll see a lot more attention on it.
Do we even want a cure? Alzheimers generates a lot of revenue....
It hardly matters. Old people will eventually spend all of that money on some other medical condition. Unless you have a cure for old age in general, people will still have to face that after decades, their bodies are getting worn down. That means spending more and more money to keep it afloat or just accepting death.
Alzheimers can impact people at any age, it just so happens to happen more often later in life - like cancer.
More interestingly, there is some recent debate that alzheimers might be a 3rd form of diabetes.
Even as a casual reader of medical news I thought apoE has been linked to alzheimer's for years. The specific method of removing and inducing the phenotype might be the actual breakthrough but its not like they discovered apoE4 itself.
I've lost two close family members to Alzheimers. It's one of the cruelest diseases I've ever seen. Yes, we want a damn cure.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Part of the importance is that they use a "small molecule inhibitor" (SMI). This class of medical tins are usually easy to manufacture and ingest. In contrast, most of the other "breakthrough"molecules ave been genetically engineered proteins which are more complex. In addition, SMI drugs can be easily modified to have better profiles.
It still matters not one bit. Unless the main cause of death becomes accidents with near complete and instant fatality, eventually a person gets sick and needs expensive medical care. Instead of big pharma selling you meds for Alzheimers, they sell you meds for something else.
It's first required to detect the apoE gene and whether there are one or two copies to provide a provisional diagnosis, I guess that's not really a problem but the article doesn't say. I would guess that when patients reach some age or perhaps at birth the genetic test would be prescribed by physicians as a matter of course. What's the normal function of the gene?
Having one copy of the apoE gene doubles and two copies multiplies by 12 the chance of contracting Alzheimer's according to the article, which implies that there are other causes of Alzheimer's and also implies that having the gene doesn't predict with any certainty that carrier will exhibit symptoms if he or she lives long enough. Never-the-less this approach appears to have great promise, probably too late to help me (I'm not yet exhibiting symptoms though despite what my detractors may allege!)
Nate
alvinrod shrugged dismissively:
It hardly matters. Old people will eventually spend all of that money on some other medical condition. Unless you have a cure for old age in general, people will still have to face that after decades, their bodies are getting worn down. That means spending more and more money to keep it afloat or just accepting death.
"It hardly matters" to you - for the moment.
Wait until someone you care about develops Alzheimer's (this, of course, assumes you care about anyone other than yourself), and you have to deal with their progressive mental deterioration on a personal level. I can tell you from my personal experience that watching my mother steadily turn into a frightened, confused, paranoid sketch of herself, conversing with whom eventually became little more than an exercise in listening to a skipping record - constantly getting lost before she reached the end of a sentence, repeating the same "news" several dozen times in a half-hour phone call - was profoundly heart-rending.
To focus exclusively on the financial cost of the disease (and you are completely off-base even there, since Alzheimer's can require up to a decade or so of residential, supervised care before it becomes fatal in and of itself) and completely ignore the human one is profoundly callous, at best.
I'm not going to say, "I hope it happens to someone you love," because I wouldn't wish Alzheimer's on anyone. But I surely am tempted ...
Check out my novel.
Wait until someone you care about develops Alzheimer's (this, of course, assumes you care about anyone other than yourself), and you have to deal with their progressive mental deterioration on a personal level.
You're dealing with the politicized misanthropy movement here. They hate it when a disease is cured because it means either more young people having "too many" children, or more useless old people who should all be gassed for the benefit of Mother Gaia.
Hopefully they didn't use Theranos to confirm.
I've already known people who have developed dementia or other degenerative mental conditions. Some have had their health fail for other reasons like cancer and I've known plenty who've been done in mostly by their own vices. Talk to anyone who's been around long enough and they've seen plenty of medical tragedy, either in their own life or in that of their friends and family.
I say that it doesn't particularly matter because in the end there's going to be something that comes for you whether it's Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, strokes, etc. Whatever it is, it's scarcely pretty. I hope that when I go it's something quick like a sudden heart attack that did my grandfather in instead of something that's long and hell on everyone else around me. However, if he had the choice to live until whatever might kill him next, I'm pretty sure he'd pay whatever cost necessary. He simply didn't have any choice in the matter.
Again, it doesn't really matter because even if we can cure Alzheimer's there's just something else that will kill us instead. Perhaps it will be something that won't rob us of our sense of self or destroy the person that is us, but it's just as costly in the end from a financial point. Even my grandmother who lived a long life and enjoyed relatively good health up until her death needed care providers to help her once she became incapable of completely caring for her self. That adds up over the years.
No matter how good your health is eventually you reach a point where no amount of money can keep you alive for a second longer. Yet people desire to cling to life as much as possible. It's just not in our genes to lay down and die and if it ever was or is, those would tend not to be passed on. It's not that the medical field is particularly greedy or more so than any other business, but that people by and large are willing to spend everything they have to live just a little bit longer. I'd like to say that the ones who won't do that are the most sane among us us, but I suspect that many of them feel no reason to go on which is perhaps more tragic.
So you don't see any value in staying non-senile for as long as possible or extending lifespan?
Itâ(TM)s not about extending life. Alzheimerâ(TM)s doesnâ(TM)t directly kill you. You die from âoecomplicationsâ. Itâ(TM)s about preventing the years of suffering, and it IS suffering, for individuals and their families before they finally pass on. Alzheimerâ(TM)s is the waterboarding of diseases, and all the family can do is watch. Just my opinion as an ex EMT with 2 RN sisters that had to go through it with our father, so we unfortunately knew more about the disease medically speaking than most, and it didnâ(TM)t let us down in terms of how bad it could get. It sucks bigtime and needs to be researched every bit as aggressively as cancer, etc.