10 ms·
Do viruses trigger Alzheimer's?
- helsinkiandrew 2y agohttps://archive.ph/bxpk0 https://archive.ph/bxpk0
- ekianjo 2y ago> Two other studies, one by GSK, a pharmaceutical company, and another by a group of academics in Britain, also reported that a newer “recombinant” vaccine, which is more effective at preventing shingles than the live version, appeared to confer even greater protection against dementia. "confer" is something you use for a proven link with an interventional study, not for some random link you found within the thousands of variables you went fishing for in your observation study dataset.
- Mordisquitos 2y agoHence why the article does not say that the vaccine conferred protection against dementia, but rather that it appeared to confer protection.
- ekianjo 2y agoappear to confer is a pretty biased wording. Rather, the only correct way to write about it is "there was a correlation that needs further investigation, we have no idea if there is a causal link about it".
- throwawaymaths 2y agothr vaccine study is a pretty clear (partial) causal link. there is a jump discontinuity in all causes dementia cases based on week of birth, where the jump occurs at the NHS policy cutoff week (if you are older than this week you are ineligible fof the vaccine). It's likely partial because vaccines only confer resistance against one subset of virii and there may be nonviral Alzheimer's too. in any case causality is not really in question in that study
- Mordisquitos 2y agoI do not see the bias, all the more so given that the whole article after that first paragraph very clearly explains that further investigation is taking place to determine whether there is such a causal link. I have no idea whether conferring is a strictly defined term in the context of clinical research, but even if it is this is not a scientific journal article but aimed at the general public. Going in detail to the claim that 'appear to confer' is biased, even if we take such a strict understanding of confer, compare the semantic effect of affirming and negating the sentence with and without 'appear to' 1. 'the vaccines conferred protection' 2. 'the vaccines did not confer protection' 3. 'the vaccines appeared to confer protection' 4. 'the vaccines did not appear to confer protection' Which of the sentence above is closest to the truth, and which is most inaccurate?
- gus_massa 2y agoI agree. Double blind randomized controled trial or it didn't happen. Perhaps people with early symptoms are not given the vacine because it's too expensive and not mandatory? Perhaps people with the vaccine are younger becase it's a recent vaccine? Perhaps people that has no money for the vaccina had no money for therapies to slow the sympthoms?
- energy123 2y agoDouble blind randomized controlled trial with endpoints and statistical methods disclosed in advance from a lab with a reputation for publishing null results, or it didn't happen.
- Mordisquitos 2y agoPenultimate paragraph of TFA: 'The first double-blinded randomised clinical trial to test the effectiveness of antivirals against dementia is now under way. A group of researchers mostly based at Columbia University are testing whether valacyclovir, an antiviral used against HSV1, can slow down cognitive decline in people with early stage Alzheimer’s. Between 2018 and 2024, the researchers recruited 120 patients and treated half with the antiviral. They expect to publish their findings later this year. John Hardy, whose research forms the basis of the dominant amyloid theory of Alzheimer’s, and who has been a critic of the virus theory, says that a positive result in this trial would begin to convince him otherwise. If Dr Geldsetzer and his team can secure the funding, a similar trial of the shingles vaccine may soon follow.'
- apinstein 2y agoOh wow, a bunch of Alzheimer’s grants at Columbia were canceled, including the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Unclear if this study was affected… https://taggs.hhs.gov/Content/Data/HHS_Grants_Terminated.pdf https://taggs.hhs.gov/Content/Data/HHS_Grants_Terminated.pdf
- gus_massa 2y agoSo... and unfinished RCT of an unrelated drug an a project to start in the future a RCT of this new use of the vaccine. The problem is mixing the real protection of the vaccine against shingles that has been tested in RTC and new aplications that have not been tested enough. If there are too many false provisional anouncements, people will not thrust medicine.
- roenxi 2y agoThe part of these sort of conversations that makes me wary is this understanding that "Alzheimer's" is a disease with a single cause. I think it is beyond question that some viruses trigger Alzheimer's, because viruses can do pretty much anything. The real question that they're studying is to what extent do viruses cause Alzheimer's. If it turns out that most Alzheimer's cases are a Herpes symptom then that sounds big.
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoI agree, it is very frustrating. I will say that the reason they have not found a cause and/or cure for Alzheimer's is that it is a polygenic and polyenvironmental disease. The only way to cure Alzheimer's is to look at each person individually (personalized medicine) but that is expensive and not as profitable.
- h0l0cube 2y agoSo then "curing Alzheimer's" is akin to "curing cancer". If this is true, I wish this truth was better disseminated. Is the theory now that Alzheimer's just actual brain rot, of which their are multiple causes, and that beta amyloid plaques are just detritus of a losing battle?
- chneu 2y agoSome researchers think Alzheimer's is a man made disease. The last time I read up on this it was basically that we all have some predetermined risk of developing an Alzheimer's type disease, but that modern environmental variables raise that risk to such a high likelihood that it's become something it never used to be. Interesting to think about.
- peterfirefly 2y ago> , but that modern environmental variables raise that risk to such a high likelihood that it's become something it never used to be. Well, yeah, because more people get old enough to get it.
- elif 2y agoDo we really need questions as headlines? It's bad enough that people fail to contextualize or deeply consider the reality behind sensational headlines, but when you open the door to vague questions as headlines, you are somehow journalistically allowed to memetically plant a known lie into the zeitgeist of the majority of internet users who read the headline but dont click to read the article.
- Mordisquitos 2y agoI would agree if the article was an example of Betteridge's law of headlines [0], but in this case it is legitimately reflecting the overall message of the article, which is that it is becoming an open research question in science whether viruses trigger Alzheimer's having previously been a fringe hypothesis. The very fact that the last sentence of the article is expressed as a conditional is also consistent with the use of a question for the headline: > 'If antiviral treatments can indeed slow, delay or prevent even a small subset of these cases, the impact could be tremendous.' [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
- elif 2y agoIf there is no scientifically meaningful finding there is nothing to write about. You may as well write "do unicorns go around sprinkling Alzheimer's healing dust at night?" It's an open question, surely worth writing about and getting people's attention on right? No? Right because scientifically meaningful distinctions are the only way to understand underlying scientific process. This is not philosophy class.
- Mordisquitos 2y agoIs there tantalising evidence suggesting that unicorns may go around sprinkling Alzheimer's healing dust at night? Have scientists who were previously sceptical of the unicorn-Alzheimer hypothesis now become open to the possibility? Are clinical trials that may provide evidence in favour the causal effect of unicorns on Alzheimer's currently taking place? That would very much be a very interesting news article, and I hope it is published.
- A_D_E_P_T 2y agoVery interesting. Memantine is an antiviral/nootropic (NMDA agonist) that's considered one of the best conventional therapies for Alzheimer's. For e.g., https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32914577/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32914577/ Amantadine is a related compound that's seemingly more potent as an antiviral, and less potent at the NMDA receptor. Medical hypothesis: This makes me wonder if amantadine might be an effective drug in Alzheimer's treatment. It would come as a total shock to the med chem community if memantine's activity had to do with its suppression of viral replication, and much less to do with its activity at the NMDA receptor. As an aside, the Russians have a similar drug called bromantane which is sold OTC as a sort of mental energy booster. It's not really a stimulant, and its effects are mild enough for daily use. It might also be very interesting in this context. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromantane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromantane
- johnisgood 2y agoI believe most nootropics work for Alzheimer's, probably Huperzine A, too. Perhaps even Noopept. NMDA agonists and acetylcholinesterase (they inhibit the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine) in general. Benadryl (DPH) and first-generation antihistamines are the opposite of that, they can cause delirium (and it messes up your memory and cognition in general) and whatnot, they are anticholinergic, some more than others. I had anticholinergic toxicity from DPH before. I take Alpha-GPC (a very soluble form of choline) and Huperzine A for cognition / memory, others couple it with racetams (e.g. piracetam, pramiracetam, aniracetam, etc.).
- TechDebtDevin 2y agoMy primary care doctor is telling all of her patients not to take Zyrtec for an anti-histamine because it is causing dementia side effects in her older patients. Antecdotal but interesting.
- johnisgood 2y agoFor the reasons I mentioned, yes. :) But Zyrtec is second-generation. It shows 20,000-fold or greater selectivity for the H1 receptor over the five muscarinic acetylcholine receptors, and hence does not exhibit anticholinergic effects, so it should be OK. May still cause drowsiness, however.
- nraynaud 2y agoIt's really surprising that with all the statistical tools we have, the signal for the link between a common virus and a disease is unclear. Even if the road to a proven intervention is long, you'd think at least the link would be clear.
- tim333 2y agoI think the link has shown up in the statistics for a long time. The article mentions Ruth Itzhaki being on it for 40 years. But things seem delayed by something along the lines of politics/corruption, or by the complexity of the situation with HSV1 not being the only cause. It can become a mess https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/opinion/alzheimers-fraud-cure.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/opinion/alzheimers-fraud-... I'm hoping that AI helps sort this stuff out. It can read the papers and say hypothesis A is most likely even if professor Y had built an empire on it being hypothesis B.
- giantg2 2y agoHSV1 is estimated to affect more than 80% of the population, but less than 80% have dementia. This seems to imply there are other factors at play. Maybe it requires other factors like genetics or immune issues for it to progress.
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoI can't point to a citation but I'm sure I've seen it hypothesized that it requires both the infection, then some sort of injury to allow the virus to cross the blood brain barrier.
- giantg2 2y agoOr maybe they come through with the microplastics.
- bognition 2y agoThe issue is that we don’t have the primary data. This stuff is messy and the systems at play are extremely complicated. Often one of the most challenging parts of bio sciences is figuring out a test that will cleanly show a result that is true. Without directly testing for a connection it’s extremely rare to get unexpected data that confirms an alternate hypothesis. Even if the statistical tools are there, they can’t make up numbers that we haven’t collected yet.
- acallaha 2y ago> A group of researchers mostly based at Columbia University are testing whether valacyclovir, an antiviral used against HSV1, can slow down cognitive decline in people with early stage Alzheimer’s. Between 2018 and 2024, the researchers recruited 120 patients and treated half with the antiviral. Outsider view: while I'm excited we're making progress, I can't shake a feeling of sadness that the best we could manage was a study this small, started 7 years ago. If it's as pivotal as the article suggests, one would hope we could get more than 60 people in the experimental arm (IIUC this antiviral is widely prescribed, well-tolerated, and off-patent). Nonetheless, excited to see the outcome
- epidemiology 2y ago>If it's as pivotal as the article suggests Let's be honest, this is a longshot.
- onewheeltom 2y ago90% of drug trials fail. Shows you how primitive our accepted practice is. Where else is a 90% failure considered to be an acceptable outcome?
- esperent 2y agoYcombinator startups?
- tim333 2y agoQuite an interesting attempt to advance the general process is DeepMind's project to make a cell simulation so you can try chucking in drugs into the simulation and see what they would do quicker than in the lab/patients. They are talking about having a simple cell up in five years. Hassabis talking about it: https://youtu.be/CEOOMYxMvY4 https://youtu.be/CEOOMYxMvY4
- bkfunk 2y ago> off-patent Well there’s your problem: no one can make money off of it, unless they develop a new delivery mechanism, etc. Patents encourage developing new medicines, but not developing new knowledge about (never mind use of) old medicine. The solution (in the US) is obvious: federal funding of research that stands to help lots of people but not make lots of money. Since most of these patients (in the US) are going to be on Medicare, there could be huge potential cost savings to the taxpayer: memory care is EXPENSIVE, so even the paltry amount covered by Medicare racks up (and the opportunity costs of people paying for private memory care is enormous). But instead of increasing funding for this kind of life- AND MONEY-saving research, this administration is freezing and slashing research funding, and specifically targeting Columbia for political/Trump’s-petty-grudge reasons.
- vjk800 2y agoI don't know what it looks like from the perspective of someone in the field, but just as someone who is interested in this sort of stuff, it seems more and more plausible that quite many of diseases that have grown more prevalent in the last century, especially autoimmune diseases, are cause by viruses. It makes sense: the viral pressure has increase by a lot due to both increase in population density and increased travel across the world. At the same time there has been an increase in many autoimmune diseases, many types of cancer, Alzheimer's disease, etc. Also, from some proven cases, we know that viruses can trigger serious diseases (MS disease, type 1 diabetes).
- bloqs 2y agoImmunocompromisation due to chronic inflammation from dietary issues and stress in addition to the above as well
- theoreticalmal 2y agoHave you read Dr. Casey Means’ book on this?
- idiotsecant 2y agoLiterally every time in the history of the universe when someone has structured a sentence like this, in this context, whoever they're talking about ends up being a giant crackpot. I'm not saying this person is a crackpot, just that the pattern recognition systems are throwing off some alarms.
- tim333 2y agoAlong similar lines there was a good article in the Guardian: The brain microbiome: could understanding it help prevent dementia? https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/dec/01/the-brain-microbiome-could-understanding-it-help-prevent-dementia https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/dec/01/the-bra... Apparently viruses and also bacteria and fungi getting in the brain and causing problems are quite common.
- paul_h 2y ago"Alzheimers-like" is a thing too: https://www.research.uky.edu/news/uk-researchers-find-alzheimers-brain-changes-long-covid-patients https://www.research.uky.edu/news/uk-researchers-find-alzhei... (after covid). I am sure there were other studies, but I'm darned if I can find them after searching just now.
- zhivota 2y agoI think there is something to viruses being a big agent of aging. I'm 40 and recently came down with a bad case of norovirus, followed by some kind of flu-like thing. 3 weeks of illness. Afterwards, I felt as if I had aged 10 years, and looking into the mirror it was like looking at what I will probably look like at 50. It made me wonder how much of aging is mediated by damage from infection, which we fight off, but come out of weaker for it. It certainly makes me want to double check all my vaccines, and once my kids are older, practice a little better hygiene including things like masking up in tight spaces (pretty much impossible with a 6 and 9 year old in the house, they are the vector right now).
- chneu 2y agoGetting sick is a very stressful period, physically and mentally. It absolutely ages you. We're sick far less often nowadays. Common illnesses were more common in previous generations. Back in the day "everyone got measles". While people fear being "too clean" there is also a downside to being "too exposed".
- eumenides1 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis The hygiene hypothesis does not suggest that having more infections during childhood would be an overall benefit
- AnotherGoodName 2y agoOne that i recently experienced is 'reactive athritis' which is a form of athritis commonly experienced after a stomach virus. If you start looking into it it's due to an immune response that occurs in people with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HLA-B27 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HLA-B27 gene and that gene is associated with a large number of athritis risk factors (but also resistance to a lot of things including HIV).
- gambiting 2y agoI've had the same. It took over 5 years for me to go back to normal. Apparently somewhat common, but rarely talked about. And any virus can cause it.
- smeeger 2y agothe debunked theory that certain diseases like alzheimer's and autism are caused by viruses cannot be true because that would mean that they are caused by inflammatory insult and that would mean that vaccines contribute to or cause certain diseases. this is dangerous thinking and should not have a platform anywhere
- Mordisquitos 2y ago> the debunked theory that certain diseases like alzheimer's and autism are caused by viruses No. Not only is it not "debunked", it is not even "a theory". > cannot be true because that would mean that they are caused by inflammatory insult No. Something being caused by a virus does not imply that the mechanism is "inflammatory insult". > and that would mean that vaccines contribute to or cause certain diseases No. That certain viral infections may cause ill effects by means of inflammatory processes does not imply that "vaccines contribute to or cause certain diseases".
- SubiculumCode 2y agoand 20ish percent of autism. See maternal immune over-activation.
- torcete 2y agoWouldn't this theory be easy to prove by sequencing brain tissue samples from deceased patients? Probably more than 90% of the reads would be human, but still.
- MPSFounder 2y agoCan someone explain to me how it can be so hard to track down the exact cause for this disease? My grandma passed from it. It seems to be relatively common. What makes this so difficult to treat relative to other diseases? Freshman year of college I was told it was amyloid proteins. Then make a drug to eliminate them. I am having difficulty seeing how 20 years since my grandmother passed, the cause still shows as unknown on reputable sources.
- pedalpete 2y agoWe still don't have a correct model for what Alzheimer's is, and therefore how to treat it. Compare this to something like HIV, where we were able to quickly understand that the virus attacks CD4 cells, and limits the body's ability to defend from disease. With Alzheimer's, we're still in the - is it amyloid and tau? is it inflammation? is it viral? This is compounded by our limited understanding of the brain. Another hypothesis which I ascribe to is that we are lumping multiple diseases under the label of Alzheimer's because we don't understand it enough.
- MPSFounder 2y agoThat's interesting. It could be multiple different dementia diseases that are different enough to require their own hypothesis. I recently read League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis. CTE is also a brain condition that is only diagnosed postmortem due to the invasive procedure needed. It seems the brains of living are indeed difficult to study.
- pedalpete 2y agoI think another thing to consider is that we really don't know how the brain works. Sure we know there are neurons, and they create electrical charges, and there are neurotransmitters, etc etc. but we REALLY don't have a model for how these things relate to thought, memory, etc. I equate it to how our understanding of the body has changed over time. When we understood fluid dynamics, we looked at the body as a series of pumps and magical fluid called blood which carried nutrients. When we discovered electricity, we slapped our foreheads, and thought "of course!! it's electric!!" and now we relate everything to our understanding of electrical activity AND hydrodynamics. I am sure there is a time in the not to distant future where we will discover how the mind works is related to our understanding of quantum...and we'll continue down the rabbit hole.
- narrator 2y agoThis is why methylene blue has been so successful in Alzheimer's research. It's antimicrobial and gets into the brain easily.
- ProjectArcturis 2y agoBy "so successful", do you mean "failed all pivotal clinical trials"?
- throwaway2037 2y agoI checked the Wiki page. There is a whole section for the quacks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylene_blue#Society_and_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylene_blue#Society_and_cul...
- pedalpete 2y agoWe cannot ignore that we know so little about how Alzheimer's works, we are potentially lumping multiple diseases under the same label. The amyloid hypothesis doesn't have to be wrong for the T3D to be true, and the viral potential to also be true if we are looking at 3-5 different diseases that have similar presentations. This also somewhat suggests why it may be the most common form of dementia. I work in the neurotech/sleeptech space (https://affectablesleep.com https://affectablesleep.com) and there is a strong link between sleep quality and Alzheimer's. It is theorized that AD is more common in women due to the lack of sleep through child-rearing and menopause, which decreases the brain's ability to remove amyliod/tau. Of course, this is only relevant to the amyliod hypothesis.
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