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Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia moves to human trials
- jobigoud 8y agoIs there speculation on what this would do to a healthy brain?
- maxander 8y agoProbably more harm than good- you probably don’t want ultrasonic waves shaking your neurons around without a good reason. This sounds like a “kick a TV and it works again” sort of technology.
- fromthestart 8y agoWho knows? Maybe certain modes of damage can result in something akin to hypertrophy in muscle?
- JamesBarney 8y agoI don't think this is a kick the TV type of technology. It's causing the microglia to activate, and I doubt it's causing any neuroinjury. Because the last people you want to injure are people with Alzheimer's.
- emiliobumachar 8y agoMany treatments of severe conditions do substantial harm, which is considered acceptable for the benefits. Extreme examples are chemotherapy, i.e. giving poison to cancer patients, and radiotherapy, i.e. irradiating them. The healthy cells can take it, the cancer cells not so much. Statistically.
- JamesBarney 8y agoYeah but this isn't chemotherapy, and with chemotherapy you are literally trying to kill cells.
- emiliobumachar 8y agoA distinction without a difference. What I meant was: it may be worth it to cause some neural damage to defuse whatever mechanism causes a disease that, when unstopped, causes more neural damage. Hence "kick the TV" technologies are not out of consideration. Obviously, very big ethical issues arise when experimenting on people, but that's nothing new. Someone took radiotherapy first, before anyone was sure it was worth it to the individual.
- mirimir 8y agoMy first thought: Great, an ultrasonic brain cleaner. Back in the day, I used an ultrasonic homogenizer for mitochondria preps. But this would be a lot gentler, I guess.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoYou might not need ultrasound though, eg https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02391-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02391-6. I can't find the link now, on mobile, but I found reference to using low frequency sound/light and that (anecdotally) individuals had tried this with their Alzheimer suffering relatives and had great success, like miraculous recovery of memory. I wonder if there is a natural occupational exposure (CRT TV?) that could give evidence here, like if fewer people long-term exposed to low frequency sound/light get Alz? Related: prenatal ultrasound could be significantly damaging, https://www.pnas.org/content/103/34/12903.full https://www.pnas.org/content/103/34/12903.full.
- NickM 8y agoThere was a great Radiolab episode about the lower-frequency stuff. IIRC, the hypothesis there is that you can stimulate certain types of brainwaves that tend to run on similar frequencies, so that seems like it's probably working via a separate mechanism from the proposed effects of the ultrasound treatment, since ultrasound is way too high-frequency to correspond to any known brainwave frequencies. Perhaps both treatments could be complementary, though, assuming they both pan out.
- vorpalhex 8y agoMental percussive maintenance?
- sdenton4 8y agoIndeed; the 'open the blood-brain barrier' motivation sounds fscking scary; the barrier is there for a reason, and you'd be opening yourself to totally unknown risks in the process.
- enturn 8y agoThe first thing that came to my mind was how some people with kidney stones are treated with shock waves that breaks them up.
- ganeshkrishnan 8y agoAlzheimer is weird in that plenty of treatment works in mice but fails in humans. I suspect it's primarily because we do not fully understand the cause of Alzheimer.
- nonbel 8y agoWhy do you think that is weird? My understanding is that "mice studies" cost less than clinical trials, therefore more "mice studies" with (correct/incorrect) conclusions are created.
- heyjudy 8y agoMost likely there is no singular cause, but a slew of contributing factors that prevent amyloid clearance and promote plaque formation. That's why overlapping, holistic solutions like the Bredesen protocol, ketagenic diets and now possibly ultrasound are the best treatment than waiting for a panacea that is unlikely to ever exist.
- bitwize 8y agoAnd don't forget the vipassana and rolfing!
- newsbinator 8y agoConversely it would be shocking if most things that work on mice worked in the same ways on humans.
- rf15 8y agowhat are you thinking of specifically? I mean genetically and functionally we are incredibly similar as mammals. Most poisons/etc. work the same for example.
- zmmmmm 8y agoI'm completely speculating, but I think when your lifespan is only 2 years anyway, you have almost no selective pressure for things like the kinds of diseases of aging that humans are now battling. So there are all kinds of things like cancer and dementia that mice's systems are much more naive to, and hence they are tend to get sick from "simple", easily treatable versions of these diseases. Meanwhile humans have evolved strong defenses for all the common / simple causes and are trying to fix the "hard" versions of all these things.
- heyjudy 8y agoWow. This is amazing. My 96-yo grandmother could really try this because anything that could potentially improve her QOL would be good.
- jbb999 8y agoSounds promising and I hope it works. But until its proven to work well in humans I won't get exciting about it
- olliej 8y agoOk so the article says this successfully destroys the amyloid plaques, but does it help cognition or slow the disease? Specifically for “slowing” it seems entirely plausible that breaking up the plaques will allow misfolded proteins to migrate (due to reduced size). Ignoring entirely the there have been multiple drugs that successfully reduced amyloid build up, with no actual benefit. Eg they did exactly what they were designed for to no avail.
- jf- 8y agoIt’s moving to a phase I trial, that means it’s just being tested for tolerability and adverse effects. A firm conclusion about outcome won’t be available until a phase III trial is completed, that’s years down the line. So we don’t know, but looks promising.
- petra 8y agoAssuming this gets "breakthrough therapy" designation how many years down the line will it be available ?
- jf- 8y agoWell it's not a drug, and I assume that they're using previously approved medical devices to apply it. It seems to me to be more like a new surgical technique. In that case it may just be a matter of finding a physician willing to apply it, though without safety or efficacy data I would expect that number to be hovering around zero.
- DennisP 8y agoIt says more than that: "the team has worked to further test and refine the technique, successfully proving the treatment both clears toxic proteins and restores memory function safely in several different rodent models, including an older mouse model designed to resemble human brains of 80 to 90 years old."
- kup0 8y agoThe information around Alzheimers seems to be heading the direction that the beta-amyloid plaques are an immune response to the HSV1 herpes virus that help prevent the spread of the virus.[1] I suppose it can't be ruled out yet that this immune response could still cause damage, but it does make me wonder if the plaques are actually responsible at all for the symptoms seen, since like you said, other drugs reduce the plaques with no improvement in symptoms. It's interesting that this treatment seems to work when others do not- when they seem to be accomplishing the same thing (reduction of beta-amyloid plaques) [1] http://www.virology.ws/2018/11/08/herpes-simplex-virus-and-alzheimers-disease/ http://www.virology.ws/2018/11/08/herpes-simplex-virus-and-a...
- usmanshaikh06 8y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQhUxd82Rr0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQhUxd82Rr0
- 49para 8y agohttps://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/dale-bredesen https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/dale-bredesen
- jhayward 8y agoRather than just posting a link, it would be helpful if you would give a brief explanation of what you find useful or interesting there.