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Breakthrough Ultrasound Treatment To Reverse Dementia Moves To Human Trials
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: An extraordinarily promising new technique using ultrasound to clear the toxic protein clumps thought to cause dementia and Alzheimer's disease is moving to the first phase of human trials next year. The innovative treatment has proven successful across several animal tests and presents an exciting, drug-free way to potentially battle dementia. The ultrasound treatment was first developed back in 2015 at the University of Queensland. The initial research was working to find a way to use ultrasound to temporarily open the blood-brain barrier with the goal of helping dementia-battling antibodies better reach their target in the brain. However, early experiments with mice surprisingly revealed the targeted ultrasound waves worked to clear toxic amyloid protein plaques from the brain without any additional therapeutic drugs. The new announcement regarding the upcoming move to human trials is underpinned by a large funding injection from the Australian government helping accelerate the treatment's development. The first stage is a phase 1 safety trial, kicking off later in 2019, to explore the safety profile of the treatment in human subjects suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
I wonder if such ultrasound machines placed inside Congress might help some of the demented souls in there. Quite a few Parliaments 'round the world might give it a shot, too.
Demented, dementia, whatever.
White Baby boomers produced an average positive net of $1,205,000 tax revenue over the course of their lives. The average black person generates a net loss of $702k.
I'm not going to assume that is true, but if it is true, the better question is what do we do about it? Are there environmental factors we can address? Is there a lead problem? Pollution? Are the schools a problem? Do we need to basically make a bunch of schools boarding schools so the environment is better controlled? Are people being trained for the jobs that exist?
Either way, i'd much rather we spent money on this kind of thing that a stupid wall. Cleaning up lead pipes would also be way more important than this wall bullshit. Do it efficiently based on need. Reduce needless lead poisoning and people should be more productive.
Yup. Remember that next time you take a pill for a fever or headache
The article seems to be behind a paywall. There's an editorial on the article describing the main points at: http://atm.amegroups.com/artic...
From that editorial: "Shimamura et al. demonstrated that a microbubble-enhanced ultrasound method successfully delivered therapeutic genes into the CNS with no evidence of brain damage". So it is not only ultrasounds that are required for this procedure to work, but some microbubble injection needed. I could not find any reference on the gas used for this microbubbles, nor their size nor how they generate them. Still sounds like a very promising treatment.
I hate signatures
Clinical medication/drug trials have repeatedly shown that removing amyloid clusters doesn't reverse dementia and usually doesn't even slow its progression. I won't get my hopes up, but it'd be wonderful if things go better this time. The target seems strange, but it sounds like there might be a little more to this approach.
Let's put aside the effects of the disease first, and it's impact on the patients body. I want to talk about just how fucked this thing is for the rest of slashdotters, and what the worst part about the disease is. It's greed.
Let me rewind to 2 years ago. It was Christmas at my Grandma's. Grandma's really special to me, as a kid she fostered me when my druggy parents could not. She made me the man I am today, took me off the streets. Taught me things that would last a lifetime, like saying, "Please, Thank you sir, and no ma'am".
She had also amassed quite a fortune, to the tune of what I'd later learn was $20 million dollars or so. Her sons never worked. They grew up thinking they were royalty of our town. Back to Christmas though.
My father whispered to me, "This is the last Christmas we'll be having here, your uncle is going to put her in a home!" I thought he was joking. 20 years earlier, my uncle had talked her letting him be a trustee of a new trust. The trust gave him powers that in the event she lost mental faculty, he could "Do what is necessary for her care" A pretty broad statement.
He had been shopping her to various doctors around town looking for one that would give her a diminished capacity declaration. Most of them refused, but the last few he met were more than happy to do it, and recommend she be placed in a secured memory facility. Basically a prison for folks with Alzheimer's. Some of these doctors did this without ever having met my grandmother.
A letter was sent out to the family, that he was going to do this to her from the lawyer that drew up the trust.
Thankfully the court was on her side. She wanted to stay home, and had always been told by my grandfather that's where she'll stay. It took 2 years of fighting, since he had access to her money. Ironic he used her own money against her to hire lawyer after lawyer. There was a compromise made, but it was in her favor for the most part. Uncle would not have conservator over her medical or financials. He would still be a trustee of the trusts, but under a yearly audit from the courts. He would pay all of her bills (including caretakers) and for repairs to her house.
It was during that fight though that pained me the most. Him and his brothers would go over there and lie to her, tell her things to confuse her. While I was at work, they'd go over there and tell her I was the bad guy. Her story changed when she talked to the court investigator, but the investigator knew what was going on, as well as my team.
Watching family lie and manipulate the affected is the most fucked part in Alzheimer's. It reduces what's called a persons susceptibility to undue influence. I'm not going to diminish the fact that my grandma's mental state deteriorated, but the stress of court, doctors, her sons trying to manipulate her (and scaring her at one point to draw a pistol on my uncle) accelerated her condition and left her in a state I can only describe as post traumatic.
I hope this cure works. I pray it works. Been hopeful before.
Alzheimer's affects the cortex, which is on the surface of the brain.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You could buy an ultrasound device on ebay ($100-$1500), and apply it to her head. May need to mod it to increase its output, though. Of course since it hasn't had Stage 1 trials, safety is unknown.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
This is cargo cult mentality. It will likely work as well as grass huts with coconut and vine radios did for calling in supplies to be airdropped from the gods into pacific island villages.
In reality, this procedure is likely to require special equipment used in a very specific way, most likely in conjunction with some other equipment and medicines.
If you read the literature (or just Google) you'll see that others have also managed to eliminate the plaques in various ways. However it remains unclear whether removal of the plaques leads to cognitive improvements. In some cases the animal models show improvement and in other cases not. The situation is even more unclear in people. There's a quick overview here. My own hunch is that a combination of early detection and then a treatment of some sort will be the way forward. Probably cognitive impairement will be hard to fix.
soylentnews.org
If you'd even read the article you linked, you would see that the amyloid plaque "cages" are left behind after the infectious agent has been killed, so yes, treating the plaques would actually make great sense - the human body fights off the infection and a non-invasive simple treatment removes the detritus. Of course, the testing will have to reveal how the brain reacts to this, but it could be a great way of staving off dementia.
Wait for them to show up on eBay for $10.99.
It will happen.
This whole thing breathes new life into the question "What's the frequency, Kenneth?".
They used a very highly focused ultrasound and more importantly injected the mice with a microbubble liquid. Without the microbubbles you would have to induce cavitation to get a mechanical effect on the plaque ... and that's a lot more destructive than the mild force of a bubble expanding/contracting.