alt Hacker NewsA controversial Alzheimer's surgery is said to reverse symptoms
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Derek Lowe's post on this: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-alzheimer-s-th...
The problem with this stuff is (as the article mentions) is that it’s going to take a while to figure out whether any benefit is just temporary.
I would guess that there are a lot of variables to eliminate too - eg is it possible that just having a surgery and recovering from anaesthesia can yield some of these benefits in some circumstances? Given that we don’t really understand how most inhaled anaesthetics fully work
I wonder if there are multiple causes of Alzheimer’s, and the variability in outcome is due to the fact that the treatment only is fixing one root cause.
That said, if it turns out that a treatment for some Alzheimer’s is some kind of “brain fluid” dialysis, it would be an amazing breakthrough.
As an ML engineer, I improve models through trial and error. Sometimes a change improves my metrics, and other times it makes them worse, and I just revert it and try something else. It's scary to think about neurological surgery making progress in a similar way. We may not have a good theoretical understanding of why a procedure works, but we observe positive outcomes in a small number of patients and then start looking into expanding its use. It reminds me of procedures where doctors sever connections between the two hemispheres of the brain to reduce seizures. I've heard they can reduce symptoms, but disrupting connections in the brain can also have unexpected consequences. I hope we can do better than essentially throwing spaghetti at the wall.
It would be great if it works out, but I believe this treatment has been suspended in China as there are mixed results (ie people have ended up worse).
Being from Scotland I'd trust an NHS evaluation more than random news reports.
I believe it was a mistake to approve anti-amyloid drugs like Aducanumab. Big Pharma threatened to stop research on Alzheimer if they couldn't sell this drug and make bumper profits from it. The FDA should never allow itself to be blackmailed in this manner. If drugs don't show a clear improvement, not just the "slowing of the progression" of the disease (which is infinitely debatable and subject to manipulation), they should be rejected.
The amyloid theory is a dead end, a wild goose chase which has led to tunnel vision and wasted three decades of research into Alzheimer. We're essentially back to square one save for some interesting data that viruses may be involved.
This had led to desperate patients seeking help from charlatans and quacks like the one described in this article.
I wonder what information we have on keeping this drainage system healthy before developing Alzheimer's.
It would explain problems with treating Alzheimers. Everybody is trying to stop the brain from generating trash that destroys it, which is probably impossible, instead of fixing the trash collection system, existence of we are barely aware of.
Flowers for Algernon
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Lots of people look to be trying to cover up and unfairly suppress this treatment. I guess big pharma stands a lot to lose, and they work for them.
I favor trials, of course, but the ones suppressing it would rather just bury it.
It seems China is repeating similar mistakes the western world did in the 20th century (e.g. psychosurgery, very weak regulations). It's like watching a car seconds before crash and you can't do anything to stop it.
If this works it will be buried so that the pharmaceutical industries can find a pill intervention, no doubt.
This article soars from hope to hype to skepticism. I guess that's a consequence of reporting on the fringes of science.
In particular, I wish there was more detail on the 100-cohort study where patients experienced "modest improvements" and how that's calculated. Is that average increase of X points on an MMSE, etc.
In my experience in my family, dementia is not a linear slide. My 85yo mother with Alzheimer's will sometimes present very well and you have to really get into conversational details to notice the dementia. On other days, she'll pick up a paperback and try to use it as a phone. Some days she's steady on her feet, some days coordinating all of those muscles is just too much.
Over the course of a couple years, you can track the decline, but it's not a straight line. "Modest improvements" makes me concerned that they measured a valley to a peak. It's only 6 months since the 100-cohort study.