5 ms·

I've also read some autopsy reports that showed many patients had Lyme's disease.

nonbel 10y ago
http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations It is best to assume "everything is correlated with everything else", rather than jump on every correlation. On the other hand it is important to encourage people to notice correlations and coincidences, but realize not every one can be followed up on, and most of these that are noticed will be only weakly involved in any solution. Really all we know at this point is that Alzheimer's disease is associated with the presence of more stuff that stains with antibodies raised towards Amyloid-beta aggregates than usual. It isn't even clear whether these are a cause or a symptom, nor whether these stains are near 100% specific towards beta-Amyloid (ie as derived from Amyloid precursor protein) rather than other aggregations of beta-sheets (like any prion "infection").
- nonbel 10y ago
  What part of this triggered a downvote? Am I not up-to-date on the current status?
  - eru 10y ago
    It's best to disregard early downvotes. There was a mythical past when Hacker News was much smaller, when (early) downvotes meant something. But that's gone.
zzz157 10y ago
Yes. 10/10 had it. Small sample size though, but, memory loss and dementia are late-stage symptoms of Lyme and associated coinfections. It makes a lot of sense. It seems like a simple study, to me, would be to take a bunch of early-stage Alzheimer's patients, give them Doxycycline/Tetracycline and observe them to see if they have a Jersch-Herxheimer reaction--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_rea...
cstejerean 10y ago
http://www.j-alz.com/content/study-disproves-link-between-lyme-disease-and-alzheimers http://www.j-alz.com/content/study-disproves-link-between-ly... A study looking at the rates of Lyne disease and Alzheimer's by state did not find a correlation. States where Lyme disease was more prevalent tended to actually have lower rates of Alzheimer's.

http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations It is best to assume "everything is correlated with everything else", rather than jump on every correlation. On the other hand it is important to encourage people to notice correlations and coincidences, but realize not every one can be followed up on, and most of these that are noticed will be only weakly involved in any solution. Really all we know at this point is that Alzheimer's disease is associated with the presence of more stuff that stains with antibodies raised towards Amyloid-beta aggregates than usual. It isn't even clear whether these are a cause or a symptom, nor whether these stains are near 100% specific towards beta-Amyloid (ie as derived from Amyloid precursor protein) rather than other aggregations of beta-sheets (like any prion "infection").

nonbel 10y ago
What part of this triggered a downvote? Am I not up-to-date on the current status?
- eru 10y ago
  It's best to disregard early downvotes. There was a mythical past when Hacker News was much smaller, when (early) downvotes meant something. But that's gone.

zzz157 10y ago

Yes. 10/10 had it. Small sample size though, but, memory loss and dementia are late-stage symptoms of Lyme and associated coinfections. It makes a lot of sense. It seems like a simple study, to me, would be to take a bunch of early-stage Alzheimer's patients, give them Doxycycline/Tetracycline and observe them to see if they have a Jersch-Herxheimer reaction--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_rea...

cstejerean 10y ago

http://www.j-alz.com/content/study-disproves-link-between-lyme-disease-and-alzheimers http://www.j-alz.com/content/study-disproves-link-between-ly... A study looking at the rates of Lyne disease and Alzheimer's by state did not find a correlation. States where Lyme disease was more prevalent tended to actually have lower rates of Alzheimer's.