10 ms·

Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?

• odyssey7 5mo ago
  Given the fertility crisis, you would think that linking a devastating disease to a common and incurable STI would make the both of them top priorities.
• marbro 5mo ago
  [dead]
• robwwilliams 5mo ago
  The major problem has been lock-in of the Abeta 42 peptide fragment as the cause. This monomaniacal focus was rewarded by grant awards to team players. Karl Herrup has a terrific book on the topic How Not to Study a Disease — The Story of Alzheimer’s from MIT Press (2021, ISBN 9780262045902). He did not win many friends but I think he is right. The consensus now is that many factors contribute to the heterogeneous diseases we now call Alzheimer’s.
  • saghm 5mo ago
    The article (or I guess more accurately "podcast transcription") seems to be saying that this lock-in essentially happened due to fraud, since some of the data was intentionally doctored to get the intended result. One of the guests seems to be an author of a different book about this (with the other guest being the scientist who apparently uncovered this). I can't personally attest to the accuracy of anything they said, but they're at least alleging that it was a lot less benign than it sounds like you're describing.
    • robwwilliams 5mo ago
      The focus is definitely on scientific fraud, but what makes the fraud so easy in this case is singing and selling the same song that the big teams are singing and selling. You can fly under the radar AND get funded, and if you are “lucky” become an ultra big shot like Masliah at NIA.
      • hx8 5mo ago
        I don't buy the fraud explanation as the full explanation. Other areas of medicine (stem cell) has had bigger incidents of fraud on top of other major headwinds, and still has made more progress. Fraud is everywhere and we still move forward in most arenas.
        • hattmall 5mo ago
          In ALZ and the plaque cartel the fraud was foundational and the overwhelming source of funding for research was tied to supporting that hypothesis. The big issue, even if you have a competing theory, is that the diagnostic criteria relies heavily on the plaque and presence of indicators. So you get a group of people who have elevated plaque and MCI, but many people have elevated plaque without MCI, and just as many people have MCI without elevated plaque. So if your cure is targeting something different but the group of people you have are selected from this cohort of maybe afflicted people then it's really hard to get a significant result. Plus you tend to be dealing with old people, that have other health issues that MCI isn't causing to get any better.
        • stanford_labrat 5mo ago
          The stem cell field is also quirky. IMO it is one of the most cutthroat, competitive, ruthless fields of life sciences that is new enough in history to still have a bunch of pioneers fighting to be the figurative Oppenheimer. One PI’s fraud is quickly detected and fought over. Meanwhile the Alz and Neuro field as a whole are well established, and the amyloid hypothesis was a foundational theory taken as a fact. Any initial questioning of this and they would brand you as a lunatic.
  • SOLAR_FIELDS 5mo ago
    Reminds me of schizophrenia. A hodgepodge of different things lumped into a single label of "broad class of things we don't understand"
    • eej71 5mo ago
      Some day autisim, neurodivergent and ADHD can join that illustrious list.
  • chiefalchemist 5mo ago
    There’s another book mentioned in the podcast called “Doctored.” The gist is: bogus “science” led to loads of money / research going in a direction that was effectively fiction. People love to praise “the science” when they mean the scientific method. What they always seem to forget is that method is executed by humans. Imperfect, sometimes ego driven humans.
• readthenotes1 5mo ago
  "One possibility: a leading hypothesis pursued by researchers (and funders) was built on science that now appears to be fraudulent." Possibly the most likely possibility?
  • dirtbagskier 5mo ago
    [dead]
  • hx8 5mo ago
    There are multiple factors, but the one that contributes the most is that it's actually a very challenging disease to study and improve on. 1. It acts on the brain, one of the organs we understand the least. 2. It's relatively slow acting, and easy to miss in the early stages. 3. It impacts the older population which will have confounding health factors. 4. It doesn't fit neatly into a big category we already know a lot about, like infection or cancer.
    • levocardia 5mo ago
      Elaborating a bit - brain is hard to study since you can't easily take a biopsy of it (from a living person at least), and various brain scans are not great at identifying the stuff we care about. The slow acting nature of it means also you have to wait a long time to see results of clinical trials; also because early stages are easy to miss that also means you are stuck studying people who are already pretty senile and thus might be beyond the point where you can make a big difference. Ruxandra has a nice piece, focused on cancer, but the reasoning is basically the same here: biology is just really hard. Sometimes we get lucky but in general it's a long, slow slog. [1] https://www.writingruxandrabio.com/p/why-havent-biologists-cured-cancer https://www.writingruxandrabio.com/p/why-havent-biologists-c...
    • hcknwscommenter 5mo ago
      You can't definitively diagnose it without an autopsy of the brain.
    • Earw0rm 5mo ago
      And as with a lot of cancers, it seems to be perturbation of a dynamic system rather than a single, mechanistic cause. Think of it like brushfire in an ecosystem, or species population imbalances leading to catastrophic breakdown. These are better understood in terms of system state and preconditions, as opposed to a trigger event. Infectious disease, at least in the classic acute form (whether that's bacterial and fast - cholera - or viral and slow - HIV), is a more mechanistic process which can be halted by blocking a single step in its pathway. Systems that remain healthy and balanced via dynamic processes are harder to reason about and fix, because the root cause of a disease state can be dozens of little things adding up to the system losing its ability to maintain homeostasis.
• PaulKeeble 5mo ago
  Its done substantially better than more common diseases like ME/CFS which very few have even heard of let alone know the symptoms of and receives almost no funding at all. Alzheimer's received a further $100 million of NIH funding earlier this year (https://www.alz.org/news/2026/100-million-dollar-alzheimers-dementia-research-signed-law https://www.alz.org/news/2026/100-million-dollar-alzheimers-...). That is 6 times the total funding for ME/CFS federally which is currently just 15 million and planned to decline. The research went awry in Alziemer's due to fraud but its being funded at a reasonable level, a level many with Long Covid or ME/CFS or Fibromylgia would be very happy to see but doubt will ever happen. Funding of diseases is not "fair", it isn't based on number of sufferers * quality life years lost and we should be spending more on medical research generally. Alzeimers is one of the better funded diseases in the world.
  • avazhi 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    • klipt 5mo ago
      > long COVID is probably more accepted as a real thing by practitioners at this point than CFS Isn't long covid just CFS that can be attributed to Covid? If you accept that multiple viruses can cause "long <virus>" syndromes, of which long covid is just one example, it's plausible that CFS is really a cluster of syndromes, one category of which is these post viral syndromes. We just can't pinpoint the virus behind it every time because most viruses haven't been studied as much as Covid has.
    • s5300 5mo ago
      [dead]
    • jlpom 5mo ago
      I don't know why you're being downvoted, your comment is spot on.
      • IanGallacher 5mo ago
• jmward01 5mo ago
  'Science progresses one funeral at a time...' It is often the case that an entire field is led by a few influential people and until they leave others can't get the air they need to make real progress.
  • vixen99 5mo ago
    I think you're right. Anyone brave enough to suggest areas of investigation where there is evidence this has happened?
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
  • SwtCyber 5mo ago
    And this can happen even when everyone involved is smart and sincere
• omeysalvi 5mo ago
  It is a "There is No Antimemetics Division" kind of scenario. They discover the cure and then keep forgetting it.
• sublinear 5mo ago
  I'm not saying I'm the best informed on this topic, but I thought the root cause has been known for a long time now as degraded endocrine and cardiovascular function. That's also why Alzheimer's can take so long to develop. It's just one aspect that we've chosen to focus on because it's more clearly noticeable, but it cannot easily be treated in isolation from everything else. If it was, it would regress quickly without fixing the root causes.
  • hcknwscommenter 5mo ago
    We truly do not know the root cause. There are plenty of folks with "degraded" endocrine, cardiovascular, and both systems. Most of them do not develop Alzheimer's.
    • DANmode 5mo ago
      How many of them have their lymphatic and glymphatic systems effectively halted by parking their bodies in a chair or being bedridden? Even the most unwell person (in the US) is still dragging themselves to the store and work, on average. Simple, brief movement that we often relieve the elderly of is the pump that actions the lymphatic system. Being older brings its own additions to the table.
  • robwwilliams 5mo ago
    There is no single root cause. Many scientists have preferred to ignore this fact and that has been a serious problem. Everyone likes a simple story. Age-related diseases are not simple stories.
• tim-tday 5mo ago
  The science was delayed a decade due to fraud.
  • onesandofgrain 5mo ago
    Can u tell me what this is about?
    • buescher 5mo ago
      The amyloid hypothesis and associated fraud covered in the TFA.
    • dillydogg 5mo ago
      I liked the story as told here in Science: https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabricatio...
  • ekianjo 5mo ago
    Not just a decade
• panabee 5mo ago
  TLDR: gatekeepers stifled exploration and innovation. When a topic only has a limited number of experts, those experts become gatekeepers. Those gatekeepers directly or indirectly control research funding. Gatekeepers necessarily harbor biases, some right and some wrong, about how the field should progress. For Alzheimer's, some gatekeepers were conflicted and potentially directed the field in the wrong direction. Only time will reveal AB42's true role. It's easy to find fault in Alzheimer's. It's harder to see the general solution to the gatekeeper problem, i.e., how to allocate resources in areas with limited experts.
  • manquer 5mo ago
    > gatekeepers directly or indirectly control research funding. Perhaps funding like public grants could be controlled by few? Should not the case for private money? Relatively common health issues older people tend to get fair amount of private funding after all. Rich people tend to be older and they are lot more likely to see amongst their friends and family Alzheimer's and Parkison's or even cancer and so forth and be worried about it and thus donate money to them. In somewhat related (i.e. old people health concerns) life extension research gets all kinds of wacky non traditional research lines get funded all the time, I don't understand why would Alzheimer's would be any different.
    • panabee 5mo ago
      If you're a wealthy person lacking a neurobiology background, how do you decide which research efforts are the most promising? Which labs do you back? Generally, you rely on experts. Who typically became experts by adhering to the conventional wisdom set by gatekeepers. "Science advances one funeral at a time" feels apt. Sadly, the problem isn't confined to Alzheimer's. Whenever only a few people decide what is "right," the same pattern of stifled innovation will generally manifest itself not by design or from malice, but because it's hard for a small group to be 100% right on what works and what doesn't -- especially on matters as inscrutable as neuroimmune diseases.
      • uecker 5mo ago
• ki4jgt 5mo ago
  Type-3 diabetes? It's degraded endocrine and cardiovascular functionality. Basically, your enzymes stop producing -- things like testosterone and insulin. Your lungs stop working as efficiently, and your brain just gives out. If you're looking to beat type-3 diabetes, you need to have a daily routine of exercise while you're young to keep these systems in shape when you're old. You also don't need to belong to any marginalized groups, as ACEs tend to wear your body out over time -- breathing, kidneys, and heart in particular. People with traumatic childhoods (bullying, abusive parents, etc) have a huge risk of dying of dementia -- if their kidneys don't give out first.
  • Aurornis 5mo ago
    Alzheimer’s is a good example of a disease where we don’t have great scientific understanding on the underlying causes, but that doesn’t stop individuals from believing they understand it better than the scientists.
    • ki4jgt 5mo ago
      True dat. But most of Europe calls it type-3 diabetes, because of the reasons given.
    • CodeWriter23 5mo ago
      Actual Scientists are calling it Type-3. But these are the same scientists that are actually reversing Type 2 diabetes without expensive drugs. Of course they exist outside the pharma narrative, and they don't have any uncurious attack dogs willing to defend their narrative-busting results.
      • rcxdude 5mo ago
        >and they don't have any uncurious attack dogs willing to defend their narrative-busting results. Well, they seem to have some champions here...
        • CodeWriter23 5mo ago
• beaned 5mo ago
  I'm surprised that better science never resulted from that lady who could smell it.
  • tsherb 5mo ago
    Joy Milne, for the uninitiated: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/23/820274501/her-incredible-sense-of-smell-is-helping-scientists-find-new-ways-to-diagnose-di https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/23/8202745...
    • hackitup7 5mo ago
      This is one of the craziest articles I've ever read. I feel like this should be a major ongoing news story...
      • anon84873628 5mo ago
        Because of Joy, scientists developed a simple, non-invasive, three-minute skin swab test that analyzes sebum to diagnose Parkinson's. In laboratory settings, this test has shown an accuracy rate of over 90%. Unfortunately that insight hasn't led closer to a cure. It also turns out sort of bad to tell people they have a horrible neurodegenerative disease 10 years before the major symptoms start. Why isn't everyone's mind blown? Well for the cynical explanation, look at the state of science education and what people said about Artemis, vaccines, etc. or optimistically, there are too many mind blowing discoveries to treat them all fairly.
    • anon84873628 5mo ago
      Which is about Parkinson's, not Alzheimer's, and did lead to some new science.
• jleyank 5mo ago
  They had a biological model. They had multiple drugs that were showed activity against that model, and effectiveness in humans. Problem was, the model was wrong. Pharma’s burned billions chasing this as it’s possibly the biggest market imaginable. Whether it was fraudulent or just incorrect is a different question. We don’t know all of the details of human biology. We don’t even know what all we don’t know. Most guesses work to some degree to keep pharma alive - otherwise nobody would fund the business. Edit: Google the in the pipeline blog. This and other have discussed this at length.
  • gruez 5mo ago
    > Problem was, the model was wrong. I thought despite the fraud, it's still the best model we have[1]? The fact there was fraud doesn't mean the model is immediately incorrect. At best, it means its foundations are shakier than we thought, but it's not a slam dunk repudiation. [1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-amyloid-hypothesis https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-amyloid-h...
    • mnode 5mo ago
      Many in the research community realised the model was wrong a long time ago. This is a great read about the reasons why: 'How not to study a disease: the story of Alzheimer’s.' by Karl Herrup.
      • ACCount37 5mo ago
        Wrong or incomplete? The current findings seem consistent with "both plaques and tangles are significant components of the pathology" and "our interventions are typically late and the accumulated neurological damage is already extreme by the time clinical symptoms show". Attacking the plaques wasn't completely worthless - findings show that this often slows disease progression, especially in early cases. There are pre-symptomatic trials ongoing that may clear the air on whether "intervention is late" is the main culprit in treatment underperformance.
      • sien 5mo ago
• huflungdung 5mo ago
  [dead]
• justinator 5mo ago
  We just keep forgetting about it!
• eagsalazar2 5mo ago
  Same scam and politics as the Ancel Keys lipid-heart hypothesis. Complete BS, ego and career protectionism, resulted in the deaths of millions and most people still believe that crap.
• mehrshad 5mo ago
  https://www.statnews.com/2019/06/25/alzheimers-cabal-thwarted-progress-toward-cure/ https://www.statnews.com/2019/06/25/alzheimers-cabal-thwarte... "Despite being described as a “cabal,” the amyloid camp was neither organized nor nefarious. Those who championed the amyloid hypothesis truly believed it, and thought that focusing money and attention on it rather than competing ideas was the surest way to an effective drug. It has not worked out that way. Research focused on amyloid, and the development and testing of experimental drugs targeting it, have sucked up billions of dollars in government, foundation, and pharma funding with nothing to show for it. While targeting amyloid may or may not be necessary to treat Alzheimer’s, it is not sufficient, and the additional steps almost certainly include those that were ignored, even censored. Probably the most shattering turn came in March, when Biogen halted the study of what proponents called the most promising Alzheimer’s drug in years — an amyloid-targeting antibody." I still refer to this article seven years later. Groupthink in the medical research space sets back progress by decades. And it's not just Alzheimers. The FDA's approval process is stymied by a CYA culture that fails to adopt the risk profile it needs to in order to potentially save large contingents of sick and dying.
  • cpgxiii 5mo ago
    > The FDA's approval process is stymied by a CYA culture that fails to adopt the risk profile it needs to in order to potentially save large contingents of sick and dying. Except the history of FDA approval here is that it has been too accepting of drug candidates for Alzheimers with very weak evidence of efficacy and serious side effects. This particular field would probably be better off if the FDA took a harder position on efficacy, rather than deferring to drug companies and patient/caregiver groups that desperately want something.
    • londons_explore 5mo ago
      I would like to see the FDA get rid of their binary "Approved" approach. Instead, at the start of a treatment on a patient, an analysis must be done of all available data, and the treatment only allowed if the error bars put it within the realm of the best treatment available. That means at the start when not much data is available, it is easy to give it to a patient. But over time as more data comes in it gets harder and harder to do so if the treatment is ineffective or harmful. Data should be collected and analyzed in real-time - it should be a matter of hours between some life event like a death feeding into the dataset used for decisions on new patients.
• cookiengineer 5mo ago
  ...because Alzheimer is a dormant side effect of a virus, not of a messenger chemical. But that doesn't go well in studies and "self populism" of what funded research wanted to hear. If you study effects and not causes due to lack of measurements for reproducibility in any field of research, that's what comes out. Also check out how the new and promising correlation started by observing the Wales eligibility for mandatory shingles vaccination during an outbreak and the effect on that test group when it comes to alzheimer or dementia in their old age. Note that shingles (herpes zoster) virus is a dormant virus for decades, and it's not really treated because of that. Also note that this was only discovered because people died and their data set was publicized because of that, which I hope that can happen in an anonymous way due to it being invaluable for medical research. [1] https://www.alzheimer-europe.org/news/analysis-electronic-health-records-people-wales-finds-link-between-shingles-vaccination-and https://www.alzheimer-europe.org/news/analysis-electronic-he... [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11485228/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11485228/ [3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867425012565 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742... [4] https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/shingles-vaccine-deflects-dementia-aussies-too https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/shingles-vaccine...
  • josh-wrale 5mo ago
    Not always. Genetic causes are known.
    • cookiengineer 5mo ago
      ... which kind of points to the indicator that "Alzheimer != Alzheimer", implying that too many diseases with the same side effects are categorized together? A lot of virological and parasitical components have historically been wrongly associated with genetic markers, too. Toxoplasmosis parasite comes to mind. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii
      • 5mo ago
• iwalton3 5mo ago
  I have a kind of outlandish hypothesis that needs more research before it can be taken seriously, but it basically says that the cause and effect are backwards. Mental atrophy due to less learning/thinking, isolation, loss of meaning and purpose happens first. The sleep down regulation and decay of mental circuitry comes after. Would explain why treating the physical symptoms doesn't work. Protective against the problem is anything which keeps you mentally active, such as socialization, work, religious community participation, hobbies, and meditation. Retirement, death of partner, isolation, sleep deprivation, depression, dissociation, psychosis, medications/drugs which interfere with restful sleep increase risk. A possible falsification of this hypothesis would be if it's caused by inactivity or physical self neglect, as those often go hand in hand with the correlated and anti-correlated factors mentioned above. This is particularly interesting: > Intriguingly, studies show conscientiousness and neuroticism to be associated with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias but not with their pathologic hallmarks such as plaques, tangles, infarcts or Lewy bodies in the brain. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7484344/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7484344/
  • tempest_ 5mo ago
    > Mental atrophy due to less learning/thinking, isolation, loss of meaning and purpose happens first. Except early onset Alzheimers happens and it also happens to plenty of people for which none of those are true.
    • josh-wrale 5mo ago
      Example: Claude Shannon
    • matwood 5mo ago
      Exactly. My mom lost her job because of early onset. She was very social, read tons of books, etc…. Now, I’m happy she at least still knows who am, but she can’t put a sentence together.
    • iwalton3 5mo ago
      I mentioned this could be a possible falsification of the idea. It's also possible there are multiple causes and the modality I mentioned is a cause for some. I'm not sure. There are definitely cases where isolation contributes to cognitive decline.
• notepad0x90 5mo ago
  I'll say that I know nothing about this, but just commenting on the economics of it all: Cancer and HIV have been at the forefront of disease research, in terms of public interest and financial investment, and cancer is more like an umbrella of similar diseases than a single disorder. HIV is manageable these days, and cancer research is slowly seeing leaps in progress. Alzheimer is very important, and affects a very large number of people, it is getting lots of research funding and attention, but perhaps not enough? If it takes a certain combination of time, human-hours, money, and lots of smart people being interested in doing research in that field. Is the economics of disease research that simple? it is unknown what numeration of those variables is required to tackle Alzheimers, but if it is a lot more than cancer for example, then it might be decades or more away from being well understood. I hate to say it, but cancer and HIV feel more like things we can get, Alzheimers feels like something only old people get, and it's to easy to forget that we'll get old, and it's hard to think our older loved ones might be affected. If no one in your sphere has been affected, it's harder to prioritize the disease. My opinion is, money is the biggest obstacle, and I don't mean money for research, but money for education for researchers, and the talent pipeline. If higher education (at least for medicine) was literally free, that'd be a start. then you need lots of people getting paid to do the research independently. Right now, it feels like most disease research is being done by big pharma, so they can find the next insulin they can use to maximize profits. The incentives are all wrong on all sides, for potential researchers, the public and R&D companies.
  • solumunus 5mo ago
    The potential profits from an Alzheimer’s treatment are extremely high, I doubt it’s being overlooked. > and it's hard to think our older loved ones might be affected A large proportion of people don’t need to think about it because they have witnessed the horrific effects on loved ones first hand.
    • notepad0x90 5mo ago
      but not as much as cancer or hiv
• ks2048 5mo ago
  It's good to expose fraud and it does sound like this set back the field, but "Why has there been so little progress"? - probably because it's very hard? We barely understand how the brain stores memories. I'm dealing with someone with this disease now and it's absolutely hell.
• bentt 5mo ago
  Big Pharma refuses to believe that the gut microbiome plays a significant role in human health. They either don't take it seriously or think it's so complex that it's not worth working on. I think they're totally wrong and that the microbiome is the arbiter of not only Alzheimers but cancer and other metabolic disorders like T2 Diabetes.
  • coderintherye 5mo ago
    Regardless of what you believe, the idea that big pharma doesn't believe in gut microbiome playing a significant role in human health is absolutely wrong as easily seen by the rise of GLP-1 drugs (which affect gut microbiome) and are the blockbuster drugs "big pharma" is investing heavily in currently. Perhaps, go take a look at that.
    • bentt 5mo ago
      GLP-1’s are a weak counterpoint. Perhaps go take a look at that yourself.
  • pella 5mo ago
    [dead]
• altairprime 5mo ago
  Now that the “plaques are the disease” folks are having to listen to viable research in contradiction to them, there is a possible outcome that an mRNA vaccine for tooth decay ais also an mRNA vaccine for Alzheimer’s, if that particular theory pans out. Which would subtract a trillion dollars from GDP over a medium timescale. I remain hopeful :) but I’m not particularly holding my breath for the U.S. to invent a cure at this point, simply because of how much profit it will cost the booming industries of health insurance and elder care.
  • atombender 5mo ago
    Do you have a link? A biotech company called Cortexyme already tried a drug against P. gingivalis, which causes gum disease, based on the idea that these bacteria migrate to the brain (many old people who died of AD have gum disease and tooth loss). But that drug failed phase II/III as there was no evidence of any effect.
    • altairprime 5mo ago
      Aw, drat.
• adi4213 5mo ago
  The company I work at has been building a dementia prevention program covered by most insurance plans in the US. Our clinicians work directly on helping understand risk of neurodegenerative disease and help tailor personalized plans to improve outcomes. A recent lancet study concluded that around 45% of dementia cases are preventable [0] Happy to answer any questions people have. https://www.betterbrain.com https://www.betterbrain.com Disclaimer : I work as the CTO at BetterBrain [0] https://www.thelancet.com/commissions-do/dementia-prevention-intervention-and-care https://www.thelancet.com/commissions-do/dementia-prevention...
  • Mistletoe 5mo ago
    What things do you focus on to lower that 45%?
  • ddorian43 5mo ago
    What is your approach towards nutrition ? Meaning which exact diet do you expect to help in mental health?
    • DANmode 5mo ago
      Different person, unrelated to the above advertisement but: Sometimes any diet. Mental health struggles can exacerbate, (and be exacerbated by!) forgetting to eat, not wanting to eat, forgetting or passing up the things that keep you in homeostasis, choosing the less correct things because of an emotional response, a physiological response in a “diminished” state.
      • ddorian43 5mo ago
        I asked because I already know the correct answer, which is "metabolic psychiatry", meaning versions of keto/carnivore/epilepsy-keto diets (the latter is the strongest). Context for old people in assisted living: https://www.metabolicmind.org/resources/news-views/podcasts/metabolic-mind-podcast/revolutionizing-assisted-living-hal-cranmers-ketogenic-carnivore-approach-to-senior-wellness/ https://www.metabolicmind.org/resources/news-views/podcasts/...
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• hn_throwaway_99 5mo ago
  I'm surprised there was no mention (at least none that I found when searching) of the relatively recent research coming out of Harvard regarding the hypothesis that low levels of lithium in the brain are responsible for a lot of Alzheimer's cases. The research is still in the very early stages (largely mouse models, though they did develop the hypothesis by looking at differences in human brain tissue post mortem), but to me my biggest fear is that little research will be done because the "cure" is a commonly available, non-patentable supplement, lithium orotate. As someone in middle age with a family history of dementia, I've decided to start taking lithium orotate because the risk/reward profile looks so good from my perspective. Lithium orotate has been sold as a supplement for decades, and at those levels it is very safe with extremely-small-to-no chance of adverse effects (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230021001136 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027323002...), so I figure the worst that can happen is I'm wasting my money, but I'd take that for even the small chance that it helps ward off dementia.
  • Mistletoe 5mo ago
    Every time I read about it and get jazzed I take it and feel awful. I’m guessing my brain chemistry is better without it.
    • mongol 5mo ago
      Awful how?
      • Mistletoe 5mo ago
        My spreadsheet says it makes me feel incredibly sleepy.
        • totierne2 5mo ago
          I took lithium for <redacted tendancy> it got to my kidneys never thought of more generally microdosing lithium. Interesting. Full dose yeah flat and sleepy. Not sure it was the reason for flat out brain rot. (Other factors were available maybe just getting older.) Full dose needs blood tests as overdose weirdly bad. From <relative> due to dehydration / holiday in the sun looked like almost drunk but not drinking slopy etc. Slightly clingy desparate for interaction with strangers. <Other factors could have been available>. Not informed of damage relative seemed to recover ok. <Nationalised medical system>.
• stonecharioteer 5mo ago
  Because billionaires haven't gotten it yet, or their loved ones. If Elon or Bezos get it, it'll get funded to kingdom come.
  • jordangoldstein 5mo ago
    Bill Gates Dad had it and died from it.
• tsoukase 5mo ago
  It's because there is little progress in uncovering the mechanisms of the disease. Alzheimer's et al are tau-opathies and Parkinson's et al are synuclein-opathies. Both are degenerative and we wait for their common base in a Grand Unified Theory. I like to view degeneration of any tissue as death due to (premature) aging. So, if we treat it, we achieve immortality by applying it to all body. This is something hard.
  • r0ze-at-hn 5mo ago
    There has been massive progress in neurodegeneration research. We now understand that the brain has a complex system for processing metabolic "trash." Like all systems it has a number of components, each of which can fail. This is why a single "silver bullet" drug will likely never exist. A multi variable systems failure can not be fixed with a single variable solution. Alzheimer’s occurs when Amyloid/Tau debris accumulates faster than the glymphatic system can export it. Parkinson’s occurs when α-synuclein (Lewy Bodies) accumulates because the cellular recycling system (Mitophagy) has failed. While Choline is a critical bottleneck for Alzheimer's, Glutathione and GBA enzyme activity are the primary bottlenecks for Parkinson’s. But in both cases it depends on the person and their genetics and what matters the most. If someone is at high risk for Alzheimer's a multi-pronged approach will probably be very common. For example a post menopause woman who is not on HRT, but at high risk due to parents should be getting Choline due to the low PEMT expression, but they might have a higher risk for neuroinflammation via NLRP3 and so need to also combat that too. To say no progress has been made is to ignore the fact that we have learned a ton about the various components of these systems and how they can break down. Here are the two approximate decay equations that you can put into an online latex viewer. Alzheimer's \Psi_{AD} = \int_{0}^{t} \frac{[(\mathbf{K}_{\tau} \otimes \mathbf{K}_{A\beta}) \cdot \mathcal{I}_{NLR P 3}]}{[\mathcal{G}(Li \cdot GSK3\beta^{-1}) \cdot PRO(ER\alpha \cdot \text{PEMT}) ] \cdot \Omega_{ATP}} \cdot e^{\left( \frac{\Gamma_{\text{fibrosis}} \cdot \text{PAI-1}}{EPA \cdot \text{Natto}} \right)} \, dt Parkinson's \Psi_{PD} = \int_{0}^{t} \frac{[(\mathbf{K}_{\alpha\text{-syn}} \otimes \mathcal{I}_{LRRK2}) \cdot \mathcal{I}_{NLRP3}]}{[\mathcal{G}(\text{Parkin} \cdot \text{PINK1}) \cdot PRO(\text{Dopamine}_{\text{flux}})] \cdot \Omega_{ATP}} \cdot e^{\left(\frac{\Gamma_{\text{Oxidative}} \cdot \text{Iron}}{\text{Glutathione} \cdot \text{GBA}}\right)} \, dt And for good measure here is cancer \Psi_{Onco} = \int_{0}^{t} \frac{[ (\mathbf{M}_{mut} \otimes \mathcal{G}_{growth}) \cdot \mathcal{I}_{STAT3} ]}{ [ \mathcal{G}(p53 \cdot \text{PTEN}) \cdot PRO(\text{Anoikis}) ] \cdot \Omega_{ATP}} \cdot e^{\left( \frac{\Gamma_{hypoxia} \cdot \text{VEGF}}{\text{Repair}_{DNA} \cdot \text{Immune}_{flux}} \right)} \, dt The point of these isn't to give an exact equation, but to make the understanding of the systems and their components radically simpler for humans to understand which can help with treatment leading to questions like "Where is the bottleneck in this patients system?”
• RagnarD 5mo ago
  Because of almost certainly fraudulent science. See https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabricatio.... Research was misled for decades down the path of assuming that Amyloid plaques are causative of Alzheimers, a now disproven theory (there's an association, but that's not the same as causative.) Scientist Ruth Itzhaki spent years studying a far more promising theory of Alzheimer's: that it's caused by viral infection in the brain, particularly HSV-1, best known for causing cold sores. Most have it, so there are clearly other factors at work, likely related to susceptibility in particular individuals to to the virus infecting the brain and spreading over time. See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34205498/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34205498/ The implication is that anti-viral treatments are likely to inhibit and potentially cure Alzheimer's. There is already unintended evidence along these lines, both via antiviral drugs and vaccines.
  • atombender 5mo ago
    I see several people here who appear to be replying to the headline rather than actually reading the article (well, podcast transcript, technically). What you mention is already discussed extensively in the podcast episode, and Matt Shrag (the scientist your first link is about) is the one being interviewed in the podcast.
• PianoGamer 5mo ago
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  • tinco 5mo ago
    Ok so how does he know that? This whole podcast is about how we don't even know how tau clumps and amyloid build ups relate to the progression of the disease.
  • pingou 5mo ago
    You can still buy Oligosol Lithium in Europe.
• SwtCyber 5mo ago
  It's not just that one paper may have been wrong; it's that a fragile consensus can redirect billions of dollars and decades of work. Alzheimer's is also a brutally complex disease, so the opportunity cost of narrowing the search too early may have been enormous
• anthk 5mo ago
  I have faith on 40hz ultrasound therapies.
• imtringued 5mo ago
  I might sound like a broken record, but dentistry is stuck in the past. Alzheimer's is basically an advanced form of gum disease caused by Porphyromonas gingivalis) that has infiltrated into your jaw and then traveled into your brain where it causes systemic inflammation which in turn lets other pathogens in that cause neurodegeneration. There is probably no cure because the only thing you can do in dentistry is prevention and preventative dentistry is still in its infancy. This is probably wasted on the HN crowd though, because I haven't seen any demand for preventing Alzheimer's.
  • yxhuvud 5mo ago
    It may be one source of the disease, but it is almost certain it isn't the only source.
• cientifico 5mo ago
  We tend to forget
• ArnoldusManlius 5mo ago
  What are the 3 pro’s of Alzheimer’s disease? The 3 pro’s of Alzheimer’s disease are: - Every day you make new friends - You can hide your own eastern eggs - And every day you make new friends ——- This a a bit of a dark joke that goes around in The Netherlands. In Dutch it goes like this: Wat zijn de drie voordelen van Alzheimer? De drie voordelen van Alzheimer zijn: - je maakt elke dag weer nieuwe vrienden - je kan je eigen paaseieren verstoppen - en je maakt elke dag weer nieuwe vrienden —- The meaning of this joke is not to ridicule patients whom suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. Not at all. It is just meant to make people smile for just an instant. And making them experience a little how Alzheimer’s can affect your brain. About the question: Alzheimer’s disease is a condition of the elderly, and they’re on their way out anyway. That is what I observe. Healthcare is a moneymaking business. In capitalism. While it should be free. And excluded from patenting or copyrighting. Healthcare has turned into wealthcare. No wealth? Game over. No extra life for you. On the other hand, maybe the subject is just so complicated for today’s scientists. It is all in the eye of the beholder. The existence of F1 racing cars doesn’t mean that Tesla will never be part of Formula One’s future. As we speak there’s already one Tesla racing through space…
  • torcete 5mo ago
    "Alzheimer’s disease is a condition of the elderly, and they’re on their way out anyway." That's a such a protestant way of thinking. It contrasts very much with the catholic culture of southern Europe. I am not saying that is better or worse, but I think it is a very clear example of how different the culture is across the UE. One key aspect is how to look after your elders.
• pcrh 5mo ago
  Unable to read the full article, however the amyloid hypothesis is not without solid scientific foundations. Alzheimer's disease may occur either due to inherited mutations in the genes for APP or presenilin, in which case it can occur as young as 40 yrs old. Or it may occur "sporadically" in those over 65yrs old. The brain pathology of both is similar. Notably, amyloid is derived from APP in part by the action of presenilin, which cuts the APP protein to release the amyloid peptide (Aβ). Currently, the amyloid hypothesis is the only known way to reconcile the similarity of pathology (for both amyloid and tau) between early onset inherited AD caused by mutations in either APP or presenilin, and later onset sporadic disease. Furthermore, all the mutations in APP that cause Alzheimer's disease are located within or adjacent to the region that corresponds to Aβ amyloid, and not in the remaining 95% of the molecule. Until another way of unifying these observations is found, the amyloid hypothesis will always find supporters.
• Noaidi 5mo ago
  I would people need to read the #1 post on HN today to get a clue why they are failing with Alzheimer's. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amateur-armed-with-chatgpt-vibe-maths-a-60-year-old-problem/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amateur-armed-wit... Just like that math problem, we are starting off with wrong thinking right from the beginning. Some researchers are already talking about this but the plaques are actually a protective response to a metabolic problem in the brain which has to do with glucose transport. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8772148/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8772148/ This is why people with dementia and Alzheimer's crave sweets so much: https://helpdementia.com/why-dementia-patients-crave-sweets-and-how-to-manage-it/ https://helpdementia.com/why-dementia-patients-crave-sweets-... Alzheimer's is not a neurological problem, it is a metabolic problem.
• josh-sematic 5mo ago
  This is what the replication crisis looks like in tangible effect. I feel that consensus around major questions should never form without totally independent confirmation of experimental results. Even if not due to intentional fraud, you have to worry about, systematic errors, p-hacking, or sheer statistics (a million experiments performed by researchers is likely to yield at least one 1-in-a-million statistical fluctuation that looks like a genuine result).
• AtNightWeCode 5mo ago
  No mention of Leqembi or Kinsula? Both FDA approved. And Simufilam that was mentioned was cancelled because of a failed phase III study years ago. But fair, improved biomarker data does not mean the drug is making any real improvements for the patients especially with the side effects. But it is also well known.
• bjourne 5mo ago
  They didn't even mention Hari Shankar: https://forbetterscience.com/2023/12/20/in-bed-with-hari-and-aruna/ https://forbetterscience.com/2023/12/20/in-bed-with-hari-and... The field must be rife with fraud and manipulation.
• dev_l1x_be 5mo ago
  This could happen when there is no financial interest in finding the root cause and there is no great option for treating the symptoms
• throwpoaster 5mo ago
  One important researcher fabricated data that directed too much funding to the amyloid hypothesis. Next question.
• wat10000 5mo ago
  The most complicated known object in the universe, and a disease that attacks the one thing that sets it apart from everything else. No surprise progress is slow in coming.
• ck2 5mo ago
  There's progress, just only for those with access and can afford it The President is singlehandedly kept this side of functional via infusions of this drug each month https://beingpatient.com/fda-alzheimers-leqembi-nih-memo-trump/ https://beingpatient.com/fda-alzheimers-leqembi-nih-memo-tru... They mysteriously rushed approval despite all other activity suspended the week after he was sworn-in Watch how he disappears for a few days each month, that's why, it can only be done in a hospital and they have to do MRI for leakage
• Earw0rm 5mo ago
  The brain is a dynamic system, and a poorly understood one at that. It relies on active processes in order to not degenerate (likely the main reason why sleep deprivation is eventually fatal). Science is still some way from cataloguing all the processes involved, never mind fully understanding their workings. Alzheimer's isn't a single-point-of-failure disease, more like a dysregulation of maintenance. So there are lots of things that can tip the odds one way or another, and we may get a lot better at prevention - to the point of reducing incidence maybe five-fold, or delaying its symptomatic onset to beyond the relevant lifespan - but the idea that there might be a single "cure" seems like wishful thinking. It may also prove to be that, like a spinning-top, once things start to go off-axis it may be very difficult to restore the original stable state, and at most we can just slow it down a bit. Perhaps more uncomfortable, if most of the effective interventions, risk-reduction-wise, are social/lifestyle related, that has implications for whether people have the agency to access those things. (Time/energy/facilities/resources for exercise/active lifestyle being an obvious case in point, which is already well known to have a moderate protective effect).
• dsign 5mo ago
  "Do not attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence" and all of that, but... Alzheimer's (like a gazillion other diseases) is a product of senescence, and senescence is a subject that faces strong ideological headwinds. That leaves the medical system in a situation where they want to treat the symptoms (the diseases) instead of the root cause, and treating the set of symptoms that we call Alzheimer's is going to be tough.
  • tornikeo 5mo ago
    As a society we are so used to seeing our grandparents and parents die that thinking otherwise is near impossible. I wish we saw ageing as a disease it is, instead of a "natural therefore good" thing.
    • robwwilliams 5mo ago
      Yes, and less than $1 billion/year spent on the basic biology of aging by NIH/NIA. Funding for research on the root causes of aging is decimal dust compared to distal consequences such as cancers, cardiopulmonary diseases, renal failure, immune diseases, Alzheimer’s, etc. NIH is great at tactical research but terrible at strategic research, and politicians do not help much ;-)
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  • robwwilliams 5mo ago
    The single best predictor of Alzheimer’s disease is chronological age. Yet of NIA’s $4.5B FY2025 budget, about 60% goes to Alzheimer’s and related dementias; only 9% to the Division of Aging Biology, which funds the basic mechanisms of aging itself. The insider joke is that the “A” in NIA stands for Alzheimer’s. The deeper and sadder joke: when you fit cognitive trajectories within the subset of people who go on to develop AD, about half of the variance in their test scores is accounted for by chronological age alone. We’re spending seven times more on the disease than on the clock — and the disease is mostly the aging clock. Go figure.
• francosimon 5mo ago
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• anonymous344 5mo ago
  because coconut oil and non-usa model diet is the key. and its not making $ for the owners
• financetechbro 5mo ago
  Cuba is making progress in this space. Good thing the US has been doing everything in its power to destroy the country https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/us-citizens-in-cuba-for-new-breakthrough-alzheimers-treatment https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/us-citizens-in-cuba-for-...
  • lyu07282 5mo ago
    Surprised to see anyone mentioning this here, NeuralCIM has been talked about for years behind the iron curtain. They also developed their own COVID vaccine and send hundreds of thousands of doctors to countries in the global south but even rich nations when they need help dealing with natural disasters. The US is viciously targeting them doing incredible harm nobody ever talks about. https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/us-hardens-sanctions-targeting-medical-program-in-cuba-and-venezuela/ https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/us-hardens-sanctions-targe...
  • culi 5mo ago
    It's actually a major source of medical tourism towards Cuba
    • ch4s3 5mo ago
      No it isn't. There's little evidence this drug works beyond some small studies done in Cuba by the people who developed the drug. The sum total of medical tourism to Cuba is quite small, no more than about 10k people per year. This is large due to their healthcare system lacking basic supplies like gauze and aspirin. Belly of the Beast isn't a real news outlet, its propaganda.
      • culi 5mo ago
        What is "a lot" of tourism is arbitrary but Cuba is obviously one of the most commonly talked about medical tourist destinations. Despite being strangled by the longest running US embargo (66 years) they managed to make a remarkable and free healthcare system. According to the World Bank and WHO they have the most doctors per capita of any country. Anyone that's worked in international crises is well aware of Cuba's army of doctors that they send to help out in disasters
• sfc32 5mo ago
  Well apparently you can be a president while suffering it.
• slashdave 5mo ago
  One of the most important ingredients of a proposal for a drug development program is viability: is there a path to market. The issue with Alzheimer’s is that until recently there was no practical diagnostic test. Without a test, there is no way to run a clinical trial. No clinical trial means no drug approval. Research is halted before it even begins.
  • tim333 5mo ago
    The effects of Alzheimer’s are pretty obvious. I don't think not being able to detect it is much of an issue.
• tim333 5mo ago
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• zosima 5mo ago
  The genetic evidence that amyloid-beta is in some way causative of at least a subset of Alzheimer's disease is still extremely strong. The fact that amyloid-beta binding drugs like Lecanemab and Donanemab decrease progression is also very strong evidence for the amyloid-beta hypothesis. What seemed to be the hurdle was likely, that targeting amyloid-beta in its pathological form just wasn't easy and developers of pharmaceuticals instead focused (for unknown reasons) on the solid amyloid-beta grains in the brain. The major reason things are moving so slowly is because of the long development times of pharmaceutical compounds. A new compound will at least have to spend 2-3 years in safety studies before being tested on its first real patient, and then for Alzheimer's, which is a slowly developing disorder, nothing short of a 2-year followup time will show efficacy unless it's truly a miracle compound.
  • pcrh 5mo ago
    Unfortunately the evidence that targeting amyloid (e.g. Lecanemab and Donanemab) improves the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease is very weak. See the latest systematic review [0]. This does not mean however that amyloid plays no role in the disease, the treatment may simply be too late. [0] https://www.cochrane.org/evidence/CD016297_are-medicines-anti-amyloid-monoclonal-antibodies-reduce-build-abnormal-proteins-brain-effective https://www.cochrane.org/evidence/CD016297_are-medicines-ant...
    • zosima 5mo ago
      That systematic review is unfortunately severely flawed. They pooled the old anti-amyloid antibodies (which everybody agrees are inefficacious) and were never used outside clinical trials, with the new anti-amyloid antibodies, that does show modest efficacy in reducing the speed of progression. While these two classes of drugs target the same molecule, they are developed to target amyloid-beta in very different forms. Pooling all those drugs together, and then showing very weak effect, makes absolutely zero sense, and I hope and expect this review to be pulled soon.
      • pcrh 5mo ago
        The point of systematic reviews is to be un-biased. So if their question is whether targeting Aβ amyloid is a valid approach they have to include the unsuccessful trails as well as those purported to be successful. As to the trials specifically for Lecanemab and Donanemab, the benefits are not claimed to be either strong or large, even by those who support it. The current support these receive is more aligned with the concept that an improved targeting of Aβ amyloid might improve outcomes. This remains to be demonstrated.
• a13n 5mo ago
  can’t help but see this thread next to the Erdos one and feel like someone’s trying to tell us something :)
• lawrenceyan 5mo ago
  I'd argue the reason we’ve spun our wheels on Alzheimer's for decades isn't just about a flawed amyloid model. It’s a symptom of a much larger, dying paradigm in biotech. For decades, the industry standard was to hunt for targeted small molecules to solve singular biological issues. And to be fair, I don't think this was because of a lack of vision as it was simply the strict limit of our technological capabilities at the time. But attempting to treat a cascading, systemic disease like Alzheimer's with a single targeted molecule is like hoping replacing one pipe will solve the problem when the issue is that the entire plumbing system is corroding. This fundamental mismatch is exactly why clinical progress has stalled, and I believe the future of treating Alzheimer's will instead closely mirror how our approach to oncology has evolved. We spent years searching for a universal molecule to cure cancer before we accepted reality. We now know that effective treatment often requires sequencing a tumor's mutanome to develop a highly personalized intervention for the individual. As neurodegenerative systems fail with age, we face that exact same biological complexity. A traditional small molecule is not going to rescue a globally failing network. My personal take is that we won't see a true breakthrough in Alzheimer's until capital fully rotates out of these legacy, single-target pipelines and into programmable biological systems.
• satisfice 5mo ago
  It keeps slipping their minds.
• monster_truck 5mo ago
  An old friend of mine was one of the people working on this. Had access to top10 supercompute time and everything. He never wanted to talk about it, and he'd talk about anything. Said it made him see red. Not long before the news broke, he killed himself. I'm pretty adamant it was fraud. You don't have to look very hard to see how profit incentives are fucking up the health/medical sector. Check out how often $1000+/dose drug goes generic and within +/- 3 months a study is published that reveals it can be strongly linked to any number of issues that would have caused it to never get approved in the first place. Then you look at the original studies and see they specifically excluded anyone that those problems would have shown up in!
• Retz4o4 5mo ago
  Most of these comments are spot on. We seeded (and continued to fund) the most recently approved Alzheimer's drug on the market about 15 years ago and fought an uphill battle the entire way. The entire industry - other than what seems about a dozen neuroscientists - were fully bought into the plaque scam, and many still are. As I mentioned in a different thread some time ago, the best way to think about plaque is like gravestones in a cemetery. If you remove the gravestones, the dead bodies are still there. We were introduced to the head of neuroscience at Houston Methodist as part of our due diligence process; his entire career was built upon the removal of plaque from the brain and would not even consider an alternative theory. We ran into this for years. It made funding the trials very difficult. We were totally ignored by all the Alzheimer's charities and orgs (ie Seth Rogan's for example). Only the Michael J. Fox foundation contributed early on. However, our drug, now known as Zunveyl, was a pro-drug of already on the market Galanatmine, which was the second most commonly prescribed drug in the world for this disease (about $6BN/yr). Our pro-drug almost eliminated the side effects of Galanamine (nausea, vomiting) and enabled us to increase dosage high enough to actually get enough molecules into the brain. It was (is) awesome. Some of our first clinical trials were healthy young adults - they did extremely well. I don't think I can share the actual results but I hope that we (or someone) can fund a study to get approval for "regular people" usage one day given how well this test went. Later tests went just a well but only thanks to the "fast track" program were we able to even get to market. Even today after being on the market for about a year now, the market uptake is slow due to insurance company approvals. We are getting reorders like crazy but often new patients get denied initially and then doctors have to appeal and then they get approved. This has been taking about 6 months on average and is brutal for people with the disease (and their families). Since getting a drug to patients is actually a (sadly and surprisingly) large sales and marketing expense, the company (Alpha Cognition) is focusing on long-term-care centers for now, but we had always hoped that this would be available much more broadly and much faster. Several of the early investor's parents were alive and afflicted with this disease when we started, but have since passed away. I hope that we can get this out and help others - faster. The mother company that spun this out is also working on other molecules to try to stop Alzheimer's itself, rather than "only" help with symptoms but as always funding is a challenge. Clinical trials must be done correctly and are thus expensive. Been living this battle for 15+ years and hoped that this can shed a little light on how things have been.
• chermi 5mo ago
  I did undergrad research on amyloid aggregates in 2010, with Alzheimer's as the motivation. I remember papers coming out then making it pretty clear that there was no real mechanistic link between them. It was basically just a symptom. That was 16 years ago.
• m463 5mo ago
  I think saunas and heat-shock proteins are harder for pharma to put in pill form.
• magrietdennis 5mo ago
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