I don’t believe the plaques have been shown to be prion based, but who knows what the transmission mechanism might be.
More relevantly, the etiology is still a mystery, and nobody knows if the amyloid β is a defense, cause, mechanism, or harmless side effect of Alzheimer’s. Drugs attacking plaque have not made a difference on the disease in clinical trials. In fact the plaque theory seems to have been supported by fraud (causing a president of Stanford to be ejected) and distracted research for years.
People are working on other causes, most of which lately has focused on the tau protein.
> The recent recognition of iatrogenic amyloid β cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) and Alzheimer's disease, caused by inadvertent seeding of amyloid β pathology following historical medical procedures
That doesn't explain why shingles vaccinations are (somewhat) protective against Alzheimer's.
Unfortunately the vaccine-dementia association is a spurious finding. See this presentation: https://youtu.be/qlTnnQytOJ0
The mechanism is that people with the shingles vaccine are less likely to visit the hospital (because they don't get shingles). Because they have fewer hospital visits they are less likely to receive an incidental diagnosis of dementia from a hospital.
is it? They extended the study from "just wales" to "all of UK" and I wonder if it's possible that in the rest of the UK, adherence to the strict week-of-eligibilty criteria was less strict than in wales.
On the research side, 90% (or more)/10%. Overwhelmingly there’s little money to be made beyond a few outliers.
On the commercial side obviously money issues dominate (because the costs are enormous as are the commercial risks), but from my experience in the industry there’s a surprising amount of idealism too. Naturally, some people mouth that idealism to justify their avarice, but quite a lot are motivated by it.
We should be cloning monoclonal antigen free humans and harvesting blood from factories.
All of medical science still imagines a world where humans are in "God's shape", denying the fact that we are machines made of systems of smaller machines.
We could clone headless humans and have factories full of them. Transplants could cure all but brain cancer. Reverse aging too.
Every time I meet a postdoc biologist and hear them drone on about the limits of detection, I'm furious we are overlooking the obvious answer to everything. The mechanization of the human body as a plant and lab.
It's just going to take someone bold enough to do it, because people look at this as a horror. Like the first medical inquiry into cadavers being an affront to God.
It would fix everything and propel the biological sciences hundreds of years into the future.
> All of medical science still imagines a world where humans are in "God's shape", denying the fact that we are machines made of systems of smaller machines.
No, it’s that these systems of systems are so incredibly complex that we still don’t understand many of them deeply. And misunderstanding the relationships of systems leads to major side effects and unpredictability.
If we understood these systems then we wouldn’t have vague success rates on things like drugs or surgeries - we’d be able to say “based on all of these factors this is the treatment that works for you”. But we can’t do that, instead we have trials and shrug and say “it works for most people so it’s worth using”
More relevantly, the etiology is still a mystery, and nobody knows if the amyloid β is a defense, cause, mechanism, or harmless side effect of Alzheimer’s. Drugs attacking plaque have not made a difference on the disease in clinical trials. In fact the plaque theory seems to have been supported by fraud (causing a president of Stanford to be ejected) and distracted research for years.
People are working on other causes, most of which lately has focused on the tau protein.
That doesn't explain why shingles vaccinations are (somewhat) protective against Alzheimer's.
The mechanism is that people with the shingles vaccine are less likely to visit the hospital (because they don't get shingles). Because they have fewer hospital visits they are less likely to receive an incidental diagnosis of dementia from a hospital.
Will watch the presentation later. It'll probably be my next "laundry video".
I recently had shingles so I wouldn't be needing the vaccine for quite some years, anyway, whether it protects against Alzheimer's or not.
It's quite painful, like a big part of one's body has been scolded with very hot water or steam. And afterwards, it is incredibly itchy.
I highly recommend the vaccination just to avoid the risk of that.
On the commercial side obviously money issues dominate (because the costs are enormous as are the commercial risks), but from my experience in the industry there’s a surprising amount of idealism too. Naturally, some people mouth that idealism to justify their avarice, but quite a lot are motivated by it.
All of medical science still imagines a world where humans are in "God's shape", denying the fact that we are machines made of systems of smaller machines.
We could clone headless humans and have factories full of them. Transplants could cure all but brain cancer. Reverse aging too.
Every time I meet a postdoc biologist and hear them drone on about the limits of detection, I'm furious we are overlooking the obvious answer to everything. The mechanization of the human body as a plant and lab.
It's just going to take someone bold enough to do it, because people look at this as a horror. Like the first medical inquiry into cadavers being an affront to God.
It would fix everything and propel the biological sciences hundreds of years into the future.
We are dumb superstitious apes.
No, it’s that these systems of systems are so incredibly complex that we still don’t understand many of them deeply. And misunderstanding the relationships of systems leads to major side effects and unpredictability.
If we understood these systems then we wouldn’t have vague success rates on things like drugs or surgeries - we’d be able to say “based on all of these factors this is the treatment that works for you”. But we can’t do that, instead we have trials and shrug and say “it works for most people so it’s worth using”
We literally couldn't do this if we wanted to