3 ms·

A curious result hints at the possibility dementia is caused by fungal infection

56 points by randomname2 11y ago

moonshinefe 11y ago
I really can't wait for the follow up investigations of these studies. Alzheimer's is one of the worst diseases out there that will likely affect most of us in some way in our lives, but yet it seems less talked about versus say cancer and heart disease. I still think mental illness carries a lot of stigma, and isn't talked about as openly. It's getting better though, and studies like this make me excited that perhaps a cure or significant treatment is possible in our lifetimes.
- sbarre 11y ago
  What makes Alzheimer's so awful is the slow pace at which it takes away the people you love. You see them slowly disappear while still being physically there, over the course of years, and there's nothing you can do. I lost my grandmother to it, and it was an incredibly, and increasingly, painful 5 years for the entire family, to the point where we felt relief more than grief when she finally passed. I can only hope they find a cure or a treatment.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    Very similar experience with my grandfather who passed this summer. It's hard to pinpoint which stage of the disease is "the worst". Is it the very early onset where the patient is still largely "there" but knows of the inevitable decline, the middle stages where your function is so degraded that you can't live fully alone, but you recall what it was like just a few years ago to be able to live at home and you have no particular physical infirmity to suggest that assisted living is right, or the end stage where you can only recognize a few people and display significant concern/fear/mistrust of the nursing staff who are doing their damnedest to help you? Each stage is terrible in its own right, and the disease progression proved to me that there are indeed medical fates far, far worse than death.
- Omniusaspirer 11y ago
  Studies have long shown a link between depression and AD, and some of the newest (last couple years) seem to be showing that depression may actually be causing and accelerating AD as opposed to just being a comorbidity. In the same vein we have IBS, a condition which can sometimes be treated with antidepressants. Fascinating stuff.
stenl 11y ago
Intriguing findings, but antibodies (used here to detect fungi) are notoriously prone to false positive findings. Direct shotgun sequencing of brain DNA, in a blinded design with sufficient numbers of patients and controls, would have nailed it. Actually, I wonder why they didn't do it already? Maybe lack of money?
- deleted 11y ago
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- deleted 11y ago
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raphman_ 11y ago
Some of many critical comments from a previous discussion on HN (one week ago) [1]: > "As a biomedical researcher, I'm confident in calling this sloppy science." > "The discovery, if corroborated by others, could indeed be huge but I'm afraid it wouldn't open up new treatment options anytime soon. Fungal infections inside the body are really really hard to treat in the first place." > "I bet if they double stain with anti-amyloid-Beta they will see the staining overlap. They just say they used "antibody raised against proteins obtained from C. glabrata, C. famata, C. albicans, P. betae and S. racemosum", so they don't even know (or want to say) what these antibodies react with..." > "All of the Alzheimer's patients were 79 or older, while all of the control patients were younger than 79 except for one. More than half of the control patients were under 60. That doesn't seem like a very good control to me." > "This article does NOT provide compelling evidence that fungi are the causative agent for AD. It merely reports correlative observations. You may conclude that antifungal drugs could help patients with AD. You may also think that vaccination or some other mechanism of prevention could reduce the prevalence of AD. These conclusions are simply not supported by the data." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344
gus_massa 11y ago
Previous discussion of the same research paper, from another URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344 (337 points, 8 days ago, 154 comments) I'll copy partially a few cherrypicked comments of that thread: pcwalton> It's not [published in] Nature; it's [published in Scientific Reports that is] a "megajournal" affiliated with it with apparently much lower editorial standards.) -- thanatosmin> As a biomedical researcher, I'm confident in calling this sloppy science. There is no quantitation of staining differences across multiple fields (to demonstrate that the images aren't hand picked), no controls with the PCR study (or even showing the results besides one in the supplement), and no demonstration that the antibodies don't bind to amyloid.* [...] -- niels_olson> Hi, I do research using the same methods: immunohistochemistry. This was done with rabbit polyclonal antibodies. The key being polyclonal. We don't know what those antibodies are really staining. The difference, however, is intriguing. [...] -- nonbel> I bet if they double stain with anti-amyloid-Beta they will see the staining overlap. They just say they used "antibody raised against proteins obtained from C. glabrata, C. famata, C. albicans, P. betae and S. racemosum", so they don't even know (or want to say) what these antibodies react with... [...]
eveningcoffee 11y ago
Unfortunately it also could be that fungal infection is caused (promoted) by Alzheimer.
- mhb 11y ago
  Fortunately, TFA mentions that possibility: Do fungi usher in the disease, or does the disease usher in the fungi?
  - eveningcoffee 11y ago
    Hopefully it is possible to build an experiment (using models i.e. test animals or test tissue (new mini brains maybe?)) to find it out.

56 points by randomname2 11y ago

I really can't wait for the follow up investigations of these studies. Alzheimer's is one of the worst diseases out there that will likely affect most of us in some way in our lives, but yet it seems less talked about versus say cancer and heart disease. I still think mental illness carries a lot of stigma, and isn't talked about as openly. It's getting better though, and studies like this make me excited that perhaps a cure or significant treatment is possible in our lifetimes.

sbarre 11y ago
What makes Alzheimer's so awful is the slow pace at which it takes away the people you love. You see them slowly disappear while still being physically there, over the course of years, and there's nothing you can do. I lost my grandmother to it, and it was an incredibly, and increasingly, painful 5 years for the entire family, to the point where we felt relief more than grief when she finally passed. I can only hope they find a cure or a treatment.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  Very similar experience with my grandfather who passed this summer. It's hard to pinpoint which stage of the disease is "the worst". Is it the very early onset where the patient is still largely "there" but knows of the inevitable decline, the middle stages where your function is so degraded that you can't live fully alone, but you recall what it was like just a few years ago to be able to live at home and you have no particular physical infirmity to suggest that assisted living is right, or the end stage where you can only recognize a few people and display significant concern/fear/mistrust of the nursing staff who are doing their damnedest to help you? Each stage is terrible in its own right, and the disease progression proved to me that there are indeed medical fates far, far worse than death.
Omniusaspirer 11y ago
Studies have long shown a link between depression and AD, and some of the newest (last couple years) seem to be showing that depression may actually be causing and accelerating AD as opposed to just being a comorbidity. In the same vein we have IBS, a condition which can sometimes be treated with antidepressants. Fascinating stuff.

stenl 11y ago

Intriguing findings, but antibodies (used here to detect fungi) are notoriously prone to false positive findings. Direct shotgun sequencing of brain DNA, in a blinded design with sufficient numbers of patients and controls, would have nailed it. Actually, I wonder why they didn't do it already? Maybe lack of money?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

raphman_ 11y ago

Some of many critical comments from a previous discussion on HN (one week ago) [1]: > "As a biomedical researcher, I'm confident in calling this sloppy science." > "The discovery, if corroborated by others, could indeed be huge but I'm afraid it wouldn't open up new treatment options anytime soon. Fungal infections inside the body are really really hard to treat in the first place." > "I bet if they double stain with anti-amyloid-Beta they will see the staining overlap. They just say they used "antibody raised against proteins obtained from C. glabrata, C. famata, C. albicans, P. betae and S. racemosum", so they don't even know (or want to say) what these antibodies react with..." > "All of the Alzheimer's patients were 79 or older, while all of the control patients were younger than 79 except for one. More than half of the control patients were under 60. That doesn't seem like a very good control to me." > "This article does NOT provide compelling evidence that fungi are the causative agent for AD. It merely reports correlative observations. You may conclude that antifungal drugs could help patients with AD. You may also think that vaccination or some other mechanism of prevention could reduce the prevalence of AD. These conclusions are simply not supported by the data." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344

gus_massa 11y ago

Previous discussion of the same research paper, from another URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344 (337 points, 8 days ago, 154 comments) I'll copy partially a few cherrypicked comments of that thread: pcwalton> It's not [published in] Nature; it's [published in Scientific Reports that is] a "megajournal" affiliated with it with apparently much lower editorial standards.) -- thanatosmin> As a biomedical researcher, I'm confident in calling this sloppy science. There is no quantitation of staining differences across multiple fields (to demonstrate that the images aren't hand picked), no controls with the PCR study (or even showing the results besides one in the supplement), and no demonstration that the antibodies don't bind to amyloid.* [...] -- niels_olson> Hi, I do research using the same methods: immunohistochemistry. This was done with rabbit polyclonal antibodies. The key being polyclonal. We don't know what those antibodies are really staining. The difference, however, is intriguing. [...] -- nonbel> I bet if they double stain with anti-amyloid-Beta they will see the staining overlap. They just say they used "antibody raised against proteins obtained from C. glabrata, C. famata, C. albicans, P. betae and S. racemosum", so they don't even know (or want to say) what these antibodies react with... [...]

eveningcoffee 11y ago

Unfortunately it also could be that fungal infection is caused (promoted) by Alzheimer.

mhb 11y ago
Fortunately, TFA mentions that possibility: Do fungi usher in the disease, or does the disease usher in the fungi?
- eveningcoffee 11y ago
  Hopefully it is possible to build an experiment (using models i.e. test animals or test tissue (new mini brains maybe?)) to find it out.