7 ms·
The Alzheimer Pandemic: Is Paracetamol to Blame? (2013)
- jgershen 11y agoPublished in 2013.
- neals 11y agoSo, was Paracetamol to blame?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nonbel 11y agoWho knows? I doubt reducing fevers is a good idea in the vast majority of cases though. Clearly they serve a purpose.
- yelnatz 11y agoDepends if you believe the study or not. Its conclusion is: Alzheimer disease is primarily a man-made condition with paracetamol as its principal risk factor.
- cpncrunch 11y agoUnlikely: http://www.neurology.org/content/48/3/626.short http://www.neurology.org/content/48/3/626.short
- nikanj 11y agoBetteridge's law
- emeraldd 11y ago"Conclusion: F-AD is primarily a man-made condition with PA as its principal risk factor." From the Abstract ...
- dalbin 11y agoHacker News law of Betteridge's law of headlines. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4842803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4842803
- davidw 11y agoMaybe HN should have a Betteridge law bot that operates when the last character of a submission's title is '?'.
- jacquesm 11y agoIt's been mturked.
- Rexxar 11y agoRexxar's law: systematically downvoting people who mention betteridge's law doesn't prevent them to mention it systematically (sadly IMHO).
- gragas 11y agoJust so people are clear, paracetamol is Tylenol.
- simcop2387 11y agoAlso known as acetaminophen, and a bunch of other trade names[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol_brand_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol_brand_names
- emeraldd 11y agoAnd it happens to be included in several composite pain killers as well. (Excedrin, Vicodin, ... etc.) http://www.knowyourdose.org/common-medicines/ http://www.knowyourdose.org/common-medicines/
- 15155 11y agoFor no reason other than to prevent "abuse" by causing the user to destroy their liver with excess dosages.
- dragonwriter 11y agoAnd, contrary to Betteridge's Law, seems (per the conclusion of the article; not characterizing any other research that may be out there which may conflict with this article), in fact, to be responsible.
- JshWright 11y ago"Responsible" is a pretty strong word (and not supported by the research).
- dragonwriter 11y ago> "Responsible" is a pretty strong word (and not supported by the research). I think "seems, in fact, to be responsible" its a pretty fair simple characterization of the conclusion of the linked article, that Alzheimers is a human-created condition with PA has its principal risk factor. ("is responsible" would be stronger than is supported, but that's not what I said.)
- tptacek 11y agoThis is from 2013. Why has it seen essentially no news coverage? I can't, for instance, easily find it on sites like Science Based Medicine; you'd think they'd have lit up over this.
- cbhl 11y agoIt looks like this is just a correlation based on historical availability of Tylenol and related compounds in developed countries. It's not obvious from skimming that the author identifies the cause by which Tylenol allegedly causes Alzheimer's, which would be crucial in prevention (e.g. by changing Tylenol) and/or finding a cure.
- rbritton 11y agoThis is far from my area of expertise, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but the second section looks like it does exactly that: PA-metabolising enzymes are localised in the synaptic areas of the frontal cortex and hippocampus, where F-AD lesions arise. The initiating chemical lesions in liver poisoning comprise covalent binding of a highly reactive product of PA metabolism to proteins; similar events are believed to occur in brain, where alterations in the antigenic profiles of cerebral proteins activate the microglia. β-Amyloid forms, and, like PA itself, induces nitric oxide synthase. Peroxynitrite modifies cerebral proteins by nitrating tyrosine residues, further challenging the microglia and exacerbating the amyloid cascade. Spontaneous reinnervation, N-acetyl cysteine administration and tyrosine supplementation may attenuate the early stages of F-AD development.
- bradleyjg 11y agoI've heard that if acetaminophen were in front of the FDA today it probably wouldn't be approved at all, and certainly not over the counter -- because of the narrow therapeutic range and the risk of liver damage.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> It looks like this is just a correlation based on historical availability of Tylenol and related compounds in developed countries. That correlation is drawn, as is a correlation between Alzheimer's (and Alzheimer's-like symptoms) and symptoms potentially related to a side effect of a prior drug for which PA is the active metabolite, which was replaced by PA in the market. > It's not obvious from skimming that the author identifies the cause by which Tylenol allegedly causes Alzheimer's, Both the CYTOCHROME P450 and PA AND F-AD: EARLY-STAGE CEREBRAL INJURY sections identify particular mechanisms by which PA may cause or contribute to the progression.
- cba9 11y agoIs it just me, or is the "ANALGESICS AS RISK FACTORS FOR F-AD: (2) EPIDEMIOLOGY" section really uncompelling and the epidemiological evidence seems to amount to a few inconsistent cross-sectional studies with no particularly large correlations like implied, and a note that both paracetamol and Alzheimer's have increased over the past two centuries or so?
- Riedelbc 11y agoI am a programming neuroscientist who studies Alzheimer's, and I would like to say that, while it is not entirely clear whether or not N-acetylcysteine will prove fruitful as a therapeutic for Alzheimer's, PA/tylenol is not the same thing as N-acetylcysteine, so the NSAID link is irrelevant in that regards. The link between these two is that N-acetylcysteine is used as a treatment for overdose of PA - because of a metabolite which is produced following high consumption of PA (NAPQI). Importantly, this link does not indicate that they have inversely correlated mechanisms of action under normal circumstances. PA may not be worth exploring further, but the understanding of N-acetylcysteine is still worth exploring. Note I do not study this myself, just putting in my two cents.
- TacticalCoder 11y agoHey, long time HN user here, I'm a software dev. I have a question for you, could you give me an email I could reach you at? Hope to talk to you soon,
- chrisbennet 11y agoYour email isn't displayed in your profile. You have to put it in the "about" section of your profile if you want people to be able to see it.
- tomphoolery 11y agoI read on Paracetamol's wikipedia page that "Paracetamol also modulates the endogenous cannabinoid system" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol#Society_and_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol#Society_and_cultur...). Given recent studies that indicate Alzheimer's can be treated by THC (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25024327 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25024327), it seems that there's some kind of connection between Alzheimer's and the endogenous cannabinoid system. If that's true, then it could mean paracetamol is not really the "cause" of Alzheimer's, but rather a part of the real cause: disruption or malfunction of our brain's cannabinoid receptors. Perhaps we will finally be able to prove, scientifically and neurologically, that these receptors cannot be ignored, they play a crucial role in our survival.
- reasonattlm 11y agoMy comments on this made last year: -------- Once you know enough of the basics in a field to get by as a layperson, you'll find that scientific literature is far removed from being dry and uncontroversial. There are always heretics and novel positions being advanced - most of them wrong, but all new fields and new directions start with a few heretics, and the mainstream is consistently overturned with time, to be replaced with the new consensus. Distinguishing a good speculative hypothesis from a work of overreaching fancy can be a challenge wherever you stand in the hierarchy of knowledge, and the good-looking fallacies far outnumber the seeds of tomorrow's scientific mainstream. This is why few researchers bother to spend any time on reviewing this sort of thing when there are so very many other demands on their time. One of the SENS Research Foundation folk turned up the open access paper on paracetamol and Alzheimer's in the course of ongoing reviews of scientific literature relevant to aging, and thought it heretical enough to share as an item of interest - as a curio well outside the current consensus, not as anything to be acted on. It makes for a good read, and is well-researched, but I think that ultimately the points being made here can be explained away by the coincidence of development of medical technology, increasing longevity, and increasing wealth. When it comes down to the biochemistry, the dots aren't really joined well enough to be very compelling. So I offer this as an example of the fact that if you go digging around, you'll find very interesting papers that are well-researched, highly speculative, and probably wrong. The author of this paper has been advancing his theory for more than a decade, evidently without gathering much support. That is all part and parcel of the scientific process. The conclusion of the paper, that Alzheimer's is an artifact of paracetamol use, is something of a bold conclusion, and as I noted above I don't think it stands too well against Occam's razor. It is simpler to point to rising wealth driving the sedentary, high-calorie lifestyle that greatly raises the risk of suffering age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's, and note that this coincides with advances in medical technology that allow for more reliable identification of the condition, progress in other technologies that improve record-keeping and reliability in medicine, and the concurrent trend in rising life spans such that more people survive to ages in which neurodegenerative conditions become a significant risk. I still suggest you read the paper, as you'll find that a great deal of interesting historical data is referenced therein. You'll probably learn some things that you didn't know about the history of painkillers, for example. --------
- cedrus_libani 11y agoTLDR: Disease Foo has become more common in the past few hundred years. You know what else has become more common in the past few hundred years? Bar! Therefore, Bar causes Foo, QED.
- NormanJones 11y agodear correspondents, thank you all for your various comments. much as i would like to engage with you all i fear i cannot. i am in poor health and have short life expectation. i would like to make some general comments. first, science is a serious professional activity, too important to be discussed in a trivial or superficial manner. if you want to join the debate, please read both my papers of 2014. a search engine should find them with jones alzheimer's 2014 allergy. i cannot help it if you find them too hard to follow. i see it as my job to provide new conclusions from known facts and not to give seminars. second, open access cost me good money, in excess of £1000; quite a sum for a pensioner. third, i cannot deal with the many misunderstandings of my work. i never suggested that acetyl cystein is an antidote for Alzheimer [ad]. neither do i accept the findings of stewart et al [1997], whose paper i criticised with good reason in the first of my 2014 papers. fourth, paracetamol is a wholly UNTESTED drug, and for that reason needs special attention. there have been a number of reports of the harm it does to the unborn child. i would like to provide references but my home was raided while i was in hospital in the summer and ALL my notes were stolen. i have never come across a similar incident, which gives some idea of the trenchant opposition to my work. fifth, someone aks why there has been no news coverage? because i am totally isolated here. my emails are read, my mail is often impounded, the telephone is tapped and at least one room is bugged. this is a big operation thought to be on behalf of a huge drug company to keep the whole thing under wraps. thank you for your interest, compliments of the season, sincerely, robert jones.........
- NormanJones 11y agoAnother thing. My name is g robert norman jones. I had to use norman because i am not the only bunny in the field called robert...