5 ms·

Evidence for Person-To-Person Transmission of Alzheimer's Pathology

69 points by primroot 11y ago

DanBC 11y ago
There has been a lot of irresponsible reporting of this study in UK newspapers. http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/09September/Pages/Alzheimers-seeds-found-in-seven-CJD-victims-brains.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/09September/Pages/Alzheimers-see... > [...] as the "explosive" study itself concludes: "There is no suggestion that Alzheimer's disease is a contagious disease and no supportive evidence … that Alzheimer's disease is transmissible, notably by blood transfusion". The last para of the submitted article conflicts with the potentially misleading title. (Which is fixed with the addition of a question mark "Evidence for Person-To-Person Transmission of Alzheimer's Pathology?" (but then risks Betteridging)) > The research may be a first step toward answering the question of whether human-to-human transmission of pathological proteins is possible. “This is an observational study,” Collinge says. “We’re simply describing what we see in these patients and we are trying to explain that.” This study alone, he says, does not suffice to prove that the Alzheimer’s disease process can be induced in one individual through contact with another’s brain tissue.
ommunist 11y ago
If this disease is induced by prions, living in human brain, I suggest cooking elderly brains properly. You should not only heat the dish, but also apply more than 100,000 psi pressure simultaneously. This require a special oven. Glad, the Western culture is mostly immune, since this is not a normal addition to American diet, despite huge number of recent movies to promote this dietary habit.
- ommunist 11y ago
  To those downvoting - what are you watching? You missed Hannibal Lector, and all of the Zombie apocalypse things.
  - striking 11y ago
    HN isn't reddit? Also, commenting on downvotes will get you nothing but downvotes... (case in point, heh)
    - frozenport 11y ago
      Then why the heck are people posting psuedo science and click bait?
  - pdabbadabba 11y ago
    I sometimes think the HN community takes itself a little too seriously in an effort to be different from Reddit. Personally, I would be happy if HN threads had a little more humor like this in them. Or maybe the HNers just didn't find this comment funny? No accounting for taste, I guess.
  - colordrops 11y ago
    No one wants HN to turn into Reddit. More than half the comments there, except those in maybe /r/science, are poor attempts at humor that overshadow the discussion. I've seen humor successfully used here on HN but it's of a different sort and used sparingly. No memes or copy pasta for sure.
    - cylinder 11y ago
      Agree. Needs to be flagged and deleted.
- Grazester 11y ago
  Prions can be quite resistant to heat so I would still think twice about this meal.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    I feel like subjecting the brains to six times the pressure you'd find at the bottom of the deepest ocean trench might have some impact on the shape of the proteins. I'm not a scientist though.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Won't help. The Guidelines to deal with mad cow showed that the effect of proper cooking was none. Which if you think makes sense. The misfolded proteins are at lower energy levels already than properly folded. So it is harder to denaturate them
- api 11y ago
  I'm sure there's a market in the zombie community for an oven capable of creating the conditions you describe. This could be a major public health concern among the undead.
  - ommunist 11y ago
    that I like. It is good to see sane people like you at HN.
ackfoo 11y ago
"four exhibited some degree of cerebral amyloid angiography" Wow. Neural tissue spontaneously developing its own angiography. Amazing. This is why reading a news article about a scientific paper will give you Alzheimer's, or the functional equivalent thereof. For the sake of the little baby Jesus, can't we fucking boycott the (pseudo-)scientific press until they give us a free link to the actual paper? Do we have to be so fucking endlessly stupid? This is why I dislike humanity. Shit.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  You dislike all of humanity because people sometimes make simple typos like angiopathy to angiography?
electricblue 11y ago
TLDR: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

69 points by primroot 11y ago

DanBC 11y ago

There has been a lot of irresponsible reporting of this study in UK newspapers. http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/09September/Pages/Alzheimers-seeds-found-in-seven-CJD-victims-brains.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/09September/Pages/Alzheimers-see... > [...] as the "explosive" study itself concludes: "There is no suggestion that Alzheimer's disease is a contagious disease and no supportive evidence … that Alzheimer's disease is transmissible, notably by blood transfusion". The last para of the submitted article conflicts with the potentially misleading title. (Which is fixed with the addition of a question mark "Evidence for Person-To-Person Transmission of Alzheimer's Pathology?" (but then risks Betteridging)) > The research may be a first step toward answering the question of whether human-to-human transmission of pathological proteins is possible. “This is an observational study,” Collinge says. “We’re simply describing what we see in these patients and we are trying to explain that.” This study alone, he says, does not suffice to prove that the Alzheimer’s disease process can be induced in one individual through contact with another’s brain tissue.

ommunist 11y ago

If this disease is induced by prions, living in human brain, I suggest cooking elderly brains properly. You should not only heat the dish, but also apply more than 100,000 psi pressure simultaneously. This require a special oven. Glad, the Western culture is mostly immune, since this is not a normal addition to American diet, despite huge number of recent movies to promote this dietary habit.

ommunist 11y ago
To those downvoting - what are you watching? You missed Hannibal Lector, and all of the Zombie apocalypse things.
- striking 11y ago
  HN isn't reddit? Also, commenting on downvotes will get you nothing but downvotes... (case in point, heh)
  - frozenport 11y ago
    Then why the heck are people posting psuedo science and click bait?
- pdabbadabba 11y ago
  I sometimes think the HN community takes itself a little too seriously in an effort to be different from Reddit. Personally, I would be happy if HN threads had a little more humor like this in them. Or maybe the HNers just didn't find this comment funny? No accounting for taste, I guess.
- colordrops 11y ago
  No one wants HN to turn into Reddit. More than half the comments there, except those in maybe /r/science, are poor attempts at humor that overshadow the discussion. I've seen humor successfully used here on HN but it's of a different sort and used sparingly. No memes or copy pasta for sure.
  - cylinder 11y ago
    Agree. Needs to be flagged and deleted.
Grazester 11y ago
Prions can be quite resistant to heat so I would still think twice about this meal.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  I feel like subjecting the brains to six times the pressure you'd find at the bottom of the deepest ocean trench might have some impact on the shape of the proteins. I'm not a scientist though.
venomsnake 11y ago
Won't help. The Guidelines to deal with mad cow showed that the effect of proper cooking was none. Which if you think makes sense. The misfolded proteins are at lower energy levels already than properly folded. So it is harder to denaturate them
api 11y ago
I'm sure there's a market in the zombie community for an oven capable of creating the conditions you describe. This could be a major public health concern among the undead.
- ommunist 11y ago
  that I like. It is good to see sane people like you at HN.

ackfoo 11y ago

"four exhibited some degree of cerebral amyloid angiography" Wow. Neural tissue spontaneously developing its own angiography. Amazing. This is why reading a news article about a scientific paper will give you Alzheimer's, or the functional equivalent thereof. For the sake of the little baby Jesus, can't we fucking boycott the (pseudo-)scientific press until they give us a free link to the actual paper? Do we have to be so fucking endlessly stupid? This is why I dislike humanity. Shit.

ceejayoz 11y ago
You dislike all of humanity because people sometimes make simple typos like angiopathy to angiography?

electricblue 11y ago

TLDR: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯