5 ms·
New Alzheimer’s treatment fully restores memory function
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoIts not a drug; its not surgery; its not invasive. Why does it need FDA approval? It'll do something or it won't. We've been ultrasounding people for a decade.
- arkades 11y agoIt is an intervention applied to living tissue, claiming to have medical benefits. It's a principle of medicine that anything present in quantities/intensities sufficient enough to produce a beneficial response, is sufficient to produce a negative response (aka, side effects). Those need to be assessed and quantified. If we changed the word "ultrasound" to read "laser", I suspect it would make the need for scrutiny more intuitive. "Ultrasound" has this connotation of being harmless.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoSo is massage, or orange juice. That definition way too broad. I suppose the FDA has lots of criterion for what they manage. This is neither food nor drug.
- arkades 11y agoNo, it's a medical device, which falls squarely under their remit.
- nate_meurer 11y agoThis device alters your brain tissue. Damn straight it's going to be regulated. Massage isn't even in the same ballpark. Neither is OJ, which is regulated, just not by the FDA.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoActually your brain alters itself, growing toward a more normal function. The treatment restores the ability to grow.
- tsotha 11y ago>By oscillating super-fast, these sound waves are able to gently open up the blood-brain barrier, which is a layer that protects the brain against bacteria, and stimulate the brain’s microglial cells to activate. You'd want to study anything that messes with that barrier pretty carefully.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]