5 ms·

WTH Is Cerebrolysin, Actually?

84 points by surprisetalk 2y ago

rdtsc 2y ago
> Pigs were a fortuitous choice due to the fact that they are especially resistant to prion disease Prions is the first thing that came to mind after reading the description. I had not idea pigs are resistant to it. TIL.
- _nalply 2y ago
  Perhaps. I wouldn't believe any statements that I learnt today before some research validating it, and even then only give a measure of confidency. Here I did that for you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510857/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510857/ I trust NIH so my confidence that they write corresponds to truth is high even for the scientific interpretation of truth. And that's what they wrote: > Pigs were considered prion resistant as no natural cases have been observed despite a large population and being fed intensely with feedstuffs containing animal derived protein. However, it has been demonstrated that BSE is able to infect pigs albeit with low efficiency [...] So, no, pigs are not resistant but more resistant than cattle and humans.
  - humanfromearth9 2y ago
    Let pigs eat the central nervous system and nerves of their own race, you'll see that they are subject to ESB and prions. Cannibalism is not healthy for mammals.
  - Rebellos 2y ago
    Great paper! Sorry to nitpick, because your approach is right, but one important detail is wrong - you are not reading what NIH said, but simply a paper made by someone that NIH provides access to. It is important to remember that things on pubmed can be wrong, or subjective and biased. See header "As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health.", and you can click on "Author information" to learn more about the authors.
  - nradov 2y ago
    That article wasn't written by NIH staff. They just host a copy on their website which doesn't imply any endorsement or quality review.
    - _nalply 2y ago
      Thanks for pointing that out. As one says, the devil is in the details. That's why I tend to use a scale for confidence. Take this example of how I think: OP said, TIL that pigs are immune. This gave me misgivings. I found a counter-proof from a government website I tend to trust, even if the material is not from them. So my confidence in the statement that pigs are immune went way down. In other words I am not sure that this statement isn't misinformation.
  - gwern 2y ago
    > So, no, pigs are not resistant but more resistant than cattle and humans. ...what does 'resistant' mean if not 'less likely to be infected than something else is'? Is it not inherently a comparison?
    - rdtsc 2y ago
      Right, that's exactly what I (GP) took it to mean. Maybe there is medical "resistance" term to mean 100% immunity from something, but I meant it in a pedestrian sense that pigs are considered _more_ resistant than say cows, when I thought they'd be about the same risk for both.
  - rdtsc 2y ago
    > So, no, pigs are not resistant but more resistant than cattle and humans. That's what I meant, sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean that they are 100% immune just that they are more resistant. Perhaps that's the difference between a medical "resistance" vs the colloquial meaning. I would definitely not jump into drinking raw pig brain smoothies either way and won't advise anyone else to do it either.
- metta2uall 2y ago
  Well, before HIV came along it was thought that humans were quite resistant to retroviruses...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
knodi123 2y ago
Okay, so this miracle drug isn't a miracle either. Which miracle drug is?!?! I'm not asking sarcastically or ironically- I'm sincerely begging for miracles. Anyone??
- klipt 2y ago
  Exercise often and eat healthy. "You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."
  - isoprophlex 2y ago
    And don't stress too much, either
- brg 2y ago
  Aspirin, Caffeine for two.
- refurb 2y ago
  Plenty of them, but they tend to be FDA approved. Take the treatments for spinal muscular atrophy. If you’re born with the worst type, you die before age 2 from respiratory failure. Today? Start treatment at birth and you live a normal life.
- jaggederest 2y ago
  Penicillin, polio vaccine, thorazine, morphine, cisplatin, phenol, arguably semaglutide is the most recent. There have been miracle drugs released every decade or so since the early 1900s. They're just normal now. They stop being a miracle once we're used to them. People used to die of fevers. Of sepsis. And there was nothing that could be done. Let alone cancer.
  - jaggederest 2y ago
    Oh I forgot about insulin. A little over 1% of the people currently alive would be rapidly dead without it.
emsign 2y ago
> Ever Pharma’s explanation of how the putative peptides in Cerebrolyin cross the blood-brain barrier does not make sense and flies in the face of scientific research which shows that most peptides do not cross the blood-brain barrier It can be considered a benefit from a manufacturer's pov that their product doesn't work. If it did their customers would smarten up and stop buying it. Anyway this looks like your typical "traditional" chinese medicine scam. I mean it has something to do with animal brains, of course it works, right?
- vasco 2y ago
  > It can be considered a benefit from a manufacturer's pov that their product doesn't work. If it did their customers would smarten up and stop buying it. Even if you are not very smart, doing some tests on yourself seems easy enough. If you pull up any psychology paper on like effecs of CO2 on cognition, and do the tests on yourself, you'd expect to start doing better after a few weeks of taking it, and if not stop. But I think most people that take products to help them improve just go by feel. I read a few nootropics articles back in the day and nobody ever proved any improvement larger than drinking coffee.
  - darwinaward 2y ago
    Taking untested drugs is risky because self-testing is unreliable, can lead to serious health problems, and lacks the expert guidance needed to safely assess their effects. Anyone who does this deserves the Darwin award and science CATEGORICALLY advises you to do something else. Those who find medical breakthroughs did not take shortcuts. They are trained and experienced and painstaking. Do something well tested and proven to work instead and reap the benefits of all of these proven trained professionals. One idea: Acute Sprint Interval Exercise Increases Both Cognitive Functions and Peripheral Neurotrophic Factors in Humans.
    - vasco 2y ago
      I don't take any of this, I think they are just bait for people that want to "be better" without doing work. But what I mean is know many people that do take nootropics or "microdose" mushrooms or whatever and they never test their own cognitive abilities in a standard way before and after they start. It's almost like they don't care if it works.
A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
"“nootropics” users be like: develop never-before-seen prion diseases from Belarusian nootropics made from centrifuged pig brains that you take intravenously but it was all worth it to accomplish great things like posting on an internet messageboard about nootropics" - The Mighty Hakan
- Loughla 2y ago
  I got into nootropics to help me sleep and try to learn how to lucid dream. I got out of nootropics because anything that can make you lucid dream must have some kind of impact on your brain, and the ENTIRE culture of nootropics is based on being more productive at work (at least the forums I was on). It was kind of gross, to be honest. Put these chemicals in your body so you can focus x% more at your job. No thank you.
  - im3w1l 2y ago
    To me your perspective comes from a narrow view of what a job is. Hours go in money comes out. But it can be more than that. It can be a calling. A passion. A way to gain immortal glory by being named the discoverer of something. A way to create value and happiness for others.
  - joseluis 2y ago
    That's exactly how I see coffee, and I keep stopping taking it and then coming back every few months...
  - throwaway87483 2y ago
    Not the "entire" community, the places I spent time on years ago were focused exclusively on improved sleep efficiency, if there is such a thing. I used piracetam for a few months and functioned well on six hours of sleep per day (the norm is 1.5x that). Remembered dreams pretty well too (I very rarely remember them before or after that period). It also greatly reduced the effects of alcohol intoxication, but that was more of a downside (strip ethanol of its effects on the mind and you get pure poison). The were no other noticeable effects, and I stopped taking it because dosages were measured in hundreds of milligrams and I was worried about load on the kidneys.
treprinum 2y ago
While the science behind it is shoddy, some people with neuro long covid report significant improvement from it. Perhaps there is some not yet unearthed mechanism making it work in some cases?
- boesboes 2y ago
  Anecdotal evidence is the best evidence! -Dogbert ;)
kalium-xyz 2y ago
In using cerebrolysin I've always assumed that if it is a placebo the rituals and concepts behind it make it a very good placebo. It has a lot of "medical" potency to it because the idea of injecting pig brain "just makes sense". Also I really enjoyed my vacation to eastern Europe to acquire a stash of it. For its clinical validity I do recall that it passed some clinical trails which I'd need to look up again however like most studies with cerebrolysin it was done in shadier more bribe friendly corners of the globe so its easy to dismiss the positives. Like the study on ADHD in adults done in russia where it massively helped the participants but the sample size was very tiny. Also I highly doubt that it actually cured "mental retardation in children" like some of the packaging claims. EDIT: here we go for the clinical trails: https://go.drugbank.com/drugs/DB16599 https://go.drugbank.com/drugs/DB16599
- pshirshov 2y ago
  Oh well, my doctors thought it "cured" me, but I was misdiagnosed.
pshirshov 2y ago
Well, I've been having daily injections between age 4 and 8. Together with ATP and B1-B6-B12 mix. Don't think it made any difference, either positive or negative. The doctors thought it did, but I was misdiagnosed and as I learned later my EEG dynamics perfectly followed my real condition (which is expected to show huge improvement in EEGs with age starting around 6/7). My EEGs are still bad, but not as remarkably bad as they were when I was a kid. At least my family didn't pay for this questionable stuff, it was a free prescription.
- delton137 2y ago
  Article co-author here... that's super interesting. Would you mind sharing your condition? There's probably better things out there whatever it is...
metta2uall 2y ago
It's very likely much much safer & more effective to boost BDNF, neurogenesis, etc, by doing exercise, eating healthily, sleeping healthily, learning new things, etc...

84 points by surprisetalk 2y ago

> Pigs were a fortuitous choice due to the fact that they are especially resistant to prion disease Prions is the first thing that came to mind after reading the description. I had not idea pigs are resistant to it. TIL.

_nalply 2y ago
Perhaps. I wouldn't believe any statements that I learnt today before some research validating it, and even then only give a measure of confidency. Here I did that for you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510857/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510857/ I trust NIH so my confidence that they write corresponds to truth is high even for the scientific interpretation of truth. And that's what they wrote: > Pigs were considered prion resistant as no natural cases have been observed despite a large population and being fed intensely with feedstuffs containing animal derived protein. However, it has been demonstrated that BSE is able to infect pigs albeit with low efficiency [...] So, no, pigs are not resistant but more resistant than cattle and humans.
- humanfromearth9 2y ago
  Let pigs eat the central nervous system and nerves of their own race, you'll see that they are subject to ESB and prions. Cannibalism is not healthy for mammals.
- Rebellos 2y ago
  Great paper! Sorry to nitpick, because your approach is right, but one important detail is wrong - you are not reading what NIH said, but simply a paper made by someone that NIH provides access to. It is important to remember that things on pubmed can be wrong, or subjective and biased. See header "As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health.", and you can click on "Author information" to learn more about the authors.
- nradov 2y ago
  That article wasn't written by NIH staff. They just host a copy on their website which doesn't imply any endorsement or quality review.
  - _nalply 2y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out. As one says, the devil is in the details. That's why I tend to use a scale for confidence. Take this example of how I think: OP said, TIL that pigs are immune. This gave me misgivings. I found a counter-proof from a government website I tend to trust, even if the material is not from them. So my confidence in the statement that pigs are immune went way down. In other words I am not sure that this statement isn't misinformation.
- gwern 2y ago
  > So, no, pigs are not resistant but more resistant than cattle and humans. ...what does 'resistant' mean if not 'less likely to be infected than something else is'? Is it not inherently a comparison?
  - rdtsc 2y ago
    Right, that's exactly what I (GP) took it to mean. Maybe there is medical "resistance" term to mean 100% immunity from something, but I meant it in a pedestrian sense that pigs are considered _more_ resistant than say cows, when I thought they'd be about the same risk for both.
- rdtsc 2y ago
  > So, no, pigs are not resistant but more resistant than cattle and humans. That's what I meant, sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean that they are 100% immune just that they are more resistant. Perhaps that's the difference between a medical "resistance" vs the colloquial meaning. I would definitely not jump into drinking raw pig brain smoothies either way and won't advise anyone else to do it either.
metta2uall 2y ago
Well, before HIV came along it was thought that humans were quite resistant to retroviruses...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

knodi123 2y ago

Okay, so this miracle drug isn't a miracle either. Which miracle drug is?!?! I'm not asking sarcastically or ironically- I'm sincerely begging for miracles. Anyone??

klipt 2y ago
Exercise often and eat healthy. "You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."
- isoprophlex 2y ago
  And don't stress too much, either
brg 2y ago
Aspirin, Caffeine for two.
refurb 2y ago
Plenty of them, but they tend to be FDA approved. Take the treatments for spinal muscular atrophy. If you’re born with the worst type, you die before age 2 from respiratory failure. Today? Start treatment at birth and you live a normal life.
jaggederest 2y ago
Penicillin, polio vaccine, thorazine, morphine, cisplatin, phenol, arguably semaglutide is the most recent. There have been miracle drugs released every decade or so since the early 1900s. They're just normal now. They stop being a miracle once we're used to them. People used to die of fevers. Of sepsis. And there was nothing that could be done. Let alone cancer.
- jaggederest 2y ago
  Oh I forgot about insulin. A little over 1% of the people currently alive would be rapidly dead without it.

emsign 2y ago

> Ever Pharma’s explanation of how the putative peptides in Cerebrolyin cross the blood-brain barrier does not make sense and flies in the face of scientific research which shows that most peptides do not cross the blood-brain barrier It can be considered a benefit from a manufacturer's pov that their product doesn't work. If it did their customers would smarten up and stop buying it. Anyway this looks like your typical "traditional" chinese medicine scam. I mean it has something to do with animal brains, of course it works, right?

vasco 2y ago
> It can be considered a benefit from a manufacturer's pov that their product doesn't work. If it did their customers would smarten up and stop buying it. Even if you are not very smart, doing some tests on yourself seems easy enough. If you pull up any psychology paper on like effecs of CO2 on cognition, and do the tests on yourself, you'd expect to start doing better after a few weeks of taking it, and if not stop. But I think most people that take products to help them improve just go by feel. I read a few nootropics articles back in the day and nobody ever proved any improvement larger than drinking coffee.
- darwinaward 2y ago
  Taking untested drugs is risky because self-testing is unreliable, can lead to serious health problems, and lacks the expert guidance needed to safely assess their effects. Anyone who does this deserves the Darwin award and science CATEGORICALLY advises you to do something else. Those who find medical breakthroughs did not take shortcuts. They are trained and experienced and painstaking. Do something well tested and proven to work instead and reap the benefits of all of these proven trained professionals. One idea: Acute Sprint Interval Exercise Increases Both Cognitive Functions and Peripheral Neurotrophic Factors in Humans.
  - vasco 2y ago
    I don't take any of this, I think they are just bait for people that want to "be better" without doing work. But what I mean is know many people that do take nootropics or "microdose" mushrooms or whatever and they never test their own cognitive abilities in a standard way before and after they start. It's almost like they don't care if it works.

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago

"“nootropics” users be like: develop never-before-seen prion diseases from Belarusian nootropics made from centrifuged pig brains that you take intravenously but it was all worth it to accomplish great things like posting on an internet messageboard about nootropics" - The Mighty Hakan

Loughla 2y ago
I got into nootropics to help me sleep and try to learn how to lucid dream. I got out of nootropics because anything that can make you lucid dream must have some kind of impact on your brain, and the ENTIRE culture of nootropics is based on being more productive at work (at least the forums I was on). It was kind of gross, to be honest. Put these chemicals in your body so you can focus x% more at your job. No thank you.
- im3w1l 2y ago
  To me your perspective comes from a narrow view of what a job is. Hours go in money comes out. But it can be more than that. It can be a calling. A passion. A way to gain immortal glory by being named the discoverer of something. A way to create value and happiness for others.
- joseluis 2y ago
  That's exactly how I see coffee, and I keep stopping taking it and then coming back every few months...
- throwaway87483 2y ago
  Not the "entire" community, the places I spent time on years ago were focused exclusively on improved sleep efficiency, if there is such a thing. I used piracetam for a few months and functioned well on six hours of sleep per day (the norm is 1.5x that). Remembered dreams pretty well too (I very rarely remember them before or after that period). It also greatly reduced the effects of alcohol intoxication, but that was more of a downside (strip ethanol of its effects on the mind and you get pure poison). The were no other noticeable effects, and I stopped taking it because dosages were measured in hundreds of milligrams and I was worried about load on the kidneys.

treprinum 2y ago

While the science behind it is shoddy, some people with neuro long covid report significant improvement from it. Perhaps there is some not yet unearthed mechanism making it work in some cases?

boesboes 2y ago
Anecdotal evidence is the best evidence! -Dogbert ;)

kalium-xyz 2y ago

In using cerebrolysin I've always assumed that if it is a placebo the rituals and concepts behind it make it a very good placebo. It has a lot of "medical" potency to it because the idea of injecting pig brain "just makes sense". Also I really enjoyed my vacation to eastern Europe to acquire a stash of it. For its clinical validity I do recall that it passed some clinical trails which I'd need to look up again however like most studies with cerebrolysin it was done in shadier more bribe friendly corners of the globe so its easy to dismiss the positives. Like the study on ADHD in adults done in russia where it massively helped the participants but the sample size was very tiny. Also I highly doubt that it actually cured "mental retardation in children" like some of the packaging claims. EDIT: here we go for the clinical trails: https://go.drugbank.com/drugs/DB16599 https://go.drugbank.com/drugs/DB16599

pshirshov 2y ago
Oh well, my doctors thought it "cured" me, but I was misdiagnosed.

pshirshov 2y ago

Well, I've been having daily injections between age 4 and 8. Together with ATP and B1-B6-B12 mix. Don't think it made any difference, either positive or negative. The doctors thought it did, but I was misdiagnosed and as I learned later my EEG dynamics perfectly followed my real condition (which is expected to show huge improvement in EEGs with age starting around 6/7). My EEGs are still bad, but not as remarkably bad as they were when I was a kid. At least my family didn't pay for this questionable stuff, it was a free prescription.

delton137 2y ago
Article co-author here... that's super interesting. Would you mind sharing your condition? There's probably better things out there whatever it is...

metta2uall 2y ago

It's very likely much much safer & more effective to boost BDNF, neurogenesis, etc, by doing exercise, eating healthily, sleeping healthily, learning new things, etc...