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Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study
- MaxPock 1y agoThings I love to read. I went to visit my aunt one day, and my favourite uncle couldn't recognize me. It made me think that Alzheimer's is probably the worst thing that could happen to a person. I mean, what's worse than not being able to recognize those closest to you? You work a lifetime, and then you go out in such an undignified manner. I pray for a cure in my lifetime.
- outworlder 1y agoIt's worse. Not recognizing people close to you is really hard on everyone else(including people taking care of you), but since you don't remember, it's not as bad for you. You won't even remember whether or not you had lunch. I met a grandma that was distraught that nobody was feeding her and she was hungry. Except she had had lunch already but couldn't remember. You forget where you live so if you get out of the house you can't get back. And many have 'sundowning', they get scared if they are outside and the night falls. It's not just the forgetting either, you start losing fundamental functions and eventually die. Not to mention the aggression and mood swings, which are aggravated if you try to point out that they are forgetting things. It's a terrible disease. You cease to be you.
- groos 1y agoWhat most people don't realize is that Alzheimer's - and its friend FTD - are terminal diseases with life expectancy just as bad as many cancers. Hardly anyone makes it to 5 years after diagnosis. The bodily degeneration that eventually results in the patient being utterly unable to function is heartbreaking. Forgetting things is a relatively minor symptom. It's also terrible on the family members of the patient whose mental health also suffers along the way.
- cubefox 1y ago> It made me think that Alzheimer's is probably the worst thing that could happen to a person. Alzheimer's is slowly destroying the person, but this might in some cases be not as bad as diseases which leave the person in place but make them suffer intensely, e.g. from pain or depression. Though it's hard to compare.
- a5c11 1y agoI'll take pain over slowly reversing to fetal brain development. My grandma had it, and it was freaking sad to watch her lose all body functions. I've already made a decision that when I spot first symptoms, and there won't be a cure, I'll finish all my earthly stuff, and will buy some good morphine.
- switchbak 1y ago> It made me think that Alzheimer's is probably the worst thing that could happen to a person I've had relatives die of Alzheimer's, and others die from other causes. Let me assure you that there are worse fates than the one you describe.
- prmph 1y agoworse than familial insomnia?
- chevalier_1222 1y agoguess I'll add phone batteries to my diet
- modeless 1y agoLithium orotate is available over the counter. People could try it today. > Since lithium has not yet been shown to be safe or effective in protecting against neurodegeneration in humans, Yankner emphasizes that people should not take lithium compounds on their own I reject this kind of blind safetyism. A cursory search suggests that lithium orotate has been used for decades, and the article suggests that "profound effects" were seen at an "exquisitely low dose" which should be safe. They're going to need a much better explanation of why people shouldn't try it.
- adamgordonbell 1y agoPeople use it in much smaller dosages then it's usually prescribed to apparently beneficial effect. I believe its also in the water supply in certain places, so if it works for dementia there are natural experiments already running on this. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/low-dose-lithium-a-new-frontier-in-mental-health-treatment https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/low-dose-lithium-a-new...
- cypherpunks01 1y agoYes, it's already thought that there's an association between naturally occurring lithium in drinking water and decreased suicide rates: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/association-between-naturally-occurring-lithium-in-drinking-water-and-suicide-rates-systematic-review-and-metaanalysis-of-ecological-studies/B7DDAF6E2A818C45EA64F3424E12D67A https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-... I would think naturally occurring lithium in some people's water would give pretty good control conditions to do a wide study of this effect on Alzheimers as well?
- Mistletoe 1y agoThis is fascinating, thank you.
- valianteffort 1y agoThe addition of flouride to tap water supply likely affects brain development. Let's not go adding lithium too. These things are simple enough to advise the populace to use on their own. The government should never play nanny, ever.
- phkahler 1y agoLithium-6 if I recall correctly was the preferred isotope (for the brain, not this study). I don't recall why.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoLithium is a strange drug. It also cures bipolar disorder and nobody knows why. It also fucks up the liver over time and basically people on lithium eventually have to make a choice between dying or being insane.
- bink 1y agoSurely the minimal dosage they're studying here won't have such dramatic impacts on the liver? It's basically what's available in some water sources. It's also available in food sources like leafy greens, nuts, and legumes.
- exmadscientist 1y agoIt's mostly the kidneys that get damaged, not so much the liver. It also has a massive amount of benign or merely annoying side effects. Lithium might even be the drug with the largest overall amount of side effects. It's certainly a weird one. High-dose lithium is extremely hard on your kidneys and may well lead to kidney failure in a decade or so. Medium-dose lithium is a lot more gentle but still requires monitoring. Many people can go down in dose after initial treatment, and good psych prescribers will attempt to do this after a while. (Or patients will request it, after the other side effects of lithium become noticable after the bipolar has settled down.) Low-dose lithium is much harder to study and may well be pretty safe. May. It is not quite true that people have no idea how it cures bipolar disorder. It's definitely affecting the ion channels (sodium, potassium, etc), just like many other anticonvulsant drugs also used for treating bipolar. So the mechanism for action is not totally insane and unique. Now, why the ion channels are the place to go for certain people, that's an open question....
- dboreham 1y ago> Now, why the ion channels are the place to go Personal theory: these things are like "global constants" for the brain's GPU. Somewhat similar to the temperature constant in an LLM. There is no real "explanation" for why they work, they just have an effect. Various chemicals have various effects, often depending on the patient (because other constants vary, training data varies...) and we pick the chemical we like the effect of most.
- stivatron 1y agoWatch out, there's no reliable Alzheimer's mouse model.
- stivatron 1y agoWatch out, there is no reliable Mouse Model for Alzheimer's. I was deeply involved with mouse models at some point before quitting my phd in neuroscience and I quite remember that.
- kovek 1y agoCould you share some sources that show this to be true?
- j_bum 1y agoNot a source, but the fact that we can treat AD in mice but not humans should demonstrate OPs point sufficiently.
- themafia 1y agoWild mice do not get AD. Even if you let them achieve old age they do not develop the same brain plaques or tangles that are linked to Alzheimers. Even if they did you'd have to run huge samples then do post testing necropsies to see which mice had AD which which didn't, then filter your data, then try to find results in what remains. Otherwise you can inject the mice with a chemical known to cause AD, which is not reliable on it's own, so you can get genetically modified mice which express _some_ of the known plaques and misfolds that are associated with human AD. Animal testing is still, largely, a very unethical and cruel affair. AD testing in mice is especially fraught with hazard.
- woeirua 1y agoIf you believe the paper, the authors were able to create symptoms and plaques similar to AD just by reducing lithium levels in the diet of these mice.
- xkcd-sucks 1y agoIt's like kind of challenging to prove this kind of negative, and the supposed proof here comprises no more than pedigreed words on a page, but here consider the section "What constitutes a good model for AD?": https://sci-hub.se/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-018-0054-8 https://sci-hub.se/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-01...
- WillAdams 1y agoA spring near where I grew up used to be considered a notable watersource, and was actively bottled and sold, with the marketing proclaiming the benefits of "Lithia Water" --- always wondered how trace minerals from wells and springs affects health, and how consistent the elemental content is from year-to-year.
- nahikoa 1y agoGiven that tens of millions people have been treated for bipolar disorder with Lithium Carbonate, shouldn't researchers have already seen a correlation with Alzheimer's in patients?
- vczf 1y agoFrom the abstract of the paper: > Replacement therapy with lithium orotate, which is a Li salt with reduced amyloid binding, prevents pathological changes and memory loss in AD mouse models and ageing wild-type mice. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09335-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09335-x Another source on lithium orotate: > LiOr is proposed to cross the blood–brain barrier and enter cells more readily than Li2CO3, which will theoretically allow for reduced dosage requirements and ameliorated toxicity concerns. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8413749/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8413749/
- vczf 1y agoThe important part is this: “a Li salt with reduced amyloid binding” If cells in the brain are being deprived of lithium due to sequestration by amyloid beta plaques, then a bioavailable form of lithium that is resistant to sequestration may treat the pathology.
- MarkusQ 1y agoHold on a second here; how is the anion of a soluble metal salt going to affect what happens to the cation after they separate?
- amluto 1y agoQuoting the paper: > We reasoned that the electrostatic interaction of the Li ion with Aβ deposits would be a function of the ionization capacity of the salt, and that Li salts with reduced ionization might show reduced amyloid sequestration. To assess ionization directly, we measured the conductivity of 16 lithium salts. Inorganic Li salts, including the clinical standard lithium carbonate (Li2CO3, hereafter LiC), showed significantly elevated conductivity, indicative of increased ionization, relative to organic Li salts (P = 8 × 10−4; Fig. 5a and Extended Data Fig. 7a). Of the organic Li salts, lithium orotate (C5H3LiN2O4, hereafter LiO) showed the lowest conductance across a broad Li concentration range (Fig. 5a and Extended Data Fig. 7a) and was therefore selected for further comparison with the clinical standard LiC. From my not-exactly-expert understanding: lithium is a teeny tiny cation, and it can form compounds on a whole spectrum from ionic to covalent-ish. The authors are observing that lithium orotate does not fully dissociate in water.
- wonderwonder 1y agoI was curious if there was any correlation, inverse or other between people with Bi-polar disease treated with lithium and dementia. Seems like a good real world example that should prove out if lithium works as we know people with BD take it. Turns out there is a study that says there is. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31954065/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31954065/ "Conclusion: Individuals with BD are at higher risk of dementia than both the general population or those with MDD. Lithium appears to reduce the risk of developing dementia in BD." Overall people with Bi-Polar have a much higher rate of dementia but lithium treatment appears to reduce that. People treated with valproate instead (a mood stabilizer) do not enjoy the same benefit. So I'll commit to adding low dose lithium to my daily supplements
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- amluto 1y agoInterestingly, the proposed mechanism seems consistent with the apparent small benefit of anti-amyloid antibody therapy: if amyloid deposits interfere with lithium uptake, then removing them could restore some lithium availability without doing anything about the underlying initial cause of insufficient lithium.
- modeless 1y agoWell, it does something about the initial cause of the deficiency, but it doesn't fix the deficiency by itself. Maybe if you took lithium carbonate after clearing the plaques then you would get a recovery. But if just taking lithium orotate instead comprehensively fixes the deficiency regardless of plaques, as it seemed to do in this study, then maybe we don't need to bother treating the plaques at all. Can't wait for human trials!
- cubefox 1y agoUnfortunately lithium orotate can't be patented. It's just a mineral salt. So pharma companies have no incentive to invest in either research or clinical studies.
- funnym0nk3y 1y agoThere are so many misconceptions about lithium wrt to the human body. I don't know why so many people differentiate between lithium orotate and the lithium carbonate in psychiatry. Although they differ in absorption the active component is the lithium ion in both cases. Dosage is done according to lithium content, there are tables for converting from orotate to carbonate and back. Then the effects of lithium orotate and carbonate can't be that different. And thus, above a particular dose blood monitoring is mandatory. There are benefits of low dose lithium for sure. And the dosages in psychiatry have been on a steady decline. With lower doses come less side effects. It is definitly not the hammer of psychiatry that turns people into zombies or messes. It feels quite natural. In addition the reduction of Alzheimers cases is not unique to lithium. Many meds cause Alzheimers rates in mentally ill people to decline to general population levels.
- atombender 1y agoThe reason the researchers chose ororate is that it has reduced binding to amyloid. I don't know whether that is also true of carbonate, just pointing out they chose that lithium salt for a specific reason.
- ThinkBeat 1y agoThe headline in the article from Harvard says "Could Lithium Explain — and Treat — Alzheimer’s Disease?" The headline right now "Lithium Reverses Alzheimer's in Mice" Those are two quite different statements. Someone should fix that.
- stubish 1y agoIf you don't rewrite the headline to include 'in mice', we have to scroll past pages of people throwing shade on the study by repeating 'in mice', as if this is something new or insightful about how medical research works. Until many readers add the 'therefore not humans' fallacy in their minds.
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