Happy New Year! Stanford May Have Just Cured Alzheimer’s

[KamaAina]

http://rodmartin.org/happy-new-year-stanford-may-just-cured-alzheimers/

Researchers discovered that nerve cells die because cells which are supposed to clear the brain of bacteria, viruses and dangerous deposits, stop working.

These cells, called ‘microglia’ function well when people are young, but when they age, a single protein called EP2 stops them operating efficiently.

Now scientists have shown that blocking the protein allows the microglia to function normally again so they can hoover up the dangerous sticky amyloid-beta plaques which damage nerve cells in Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers found that, in mice, blocking EP2 with a drug reversed memory loss and myriad other Alzheimer’s-like features in the animals.

[msongs]

1. that might be good news. wonder what the side effects are? nt

[valerief]

7. Let's hope it's just lucidity. nt

[elleng]

46. GREAT MINDS!

[Xipe Totec]

22. Critical thinking and a pronounced tilt to the left. nt

[BlancheSplanchnik]

32. .

[Ed Suspicious]

42. Yup. :thumbs:

[Cirque du So-What]

34. I think I'd take my chances with side effects

I'm gonna go, one way or another, and I can't imagine a worse way to go than enduring a long slide into dementia.

[lumberjack_jeff]

77. Exactly. n/t

[hifiguy]

2. Wow, that is big news!

Latest score: Science, millions and millions of advances, religion still zero.

[jwirr]

81. LOL And here I was going to say thank god. Yeah I know "Thank science."

[olegramps]

86. No worry. The religionists will be flocking to church to thank God for a cure.

Of course they never reflect on the fact that since they claim God is omnipotent and that He or She had to power to prevent or cure this at anytime. Let alone why did He who is the creator of all life create it in the first place. Maybe, just to torture humans for the hell of it along with a host of thousands of other diseases.

[jwirr]

87. Oh, but don't you know all suffering is part of the plan for those who are not saved. Never mind

the it rains on the fields of both the good and the bad.

[Coventina]

3. Oh, I so hope this turns out to be true!

It would be the biggest medical breakthrough since vaccines, I think.

[eggplant]

82. Yea, but then Jenny McCarthy will say it causes autism.

[blackspade]

85. Listening to Jenny McCarthy causes autism.....

[valerief]

4. So now, per Congress, all our food will be crammed with EP2 so we die soon and don't

live to use any Medicare or SS benefits.

I wonder how disasterously unaffordable the anti-EP2 drug will be. I guess only people who can afford water will get it.

Am I a cynic? Uh, no reason why I shouldn't be. I'm in Ammomerica.

But thanks for the post!

[tomp]

73. I have no problem with a little cynicism....

....it's hard to avoid these days. However, are you aware of the disastrous unaffordability of alzheimers? It is projected to LITERALLY break the Medicare bank as boomers age. We cannot afford NOT to do something about it. One more reason for no cuts to Medicare.

[valerief]

83. Or to kill us off early. What would Dick Cheney want? nt

[FSogol]

5. Good news if true. How credible is Rod Martin? n/t

[Cerridwen]

14. The story from Stanford: Snopes - mostly false

http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/stanfordalzheimers.asp

rod martin from his martin foundation site as linked from the site in the OP: http://www.martinorganization.com

As a former attorney, Rod D. Martin is extremely interested in legal reform and in public interest law. He is is an award-winning civil rights scholar, has served as faculty for the Alliance Defense Fund’s Blackstone Fellowship program, and is a longtime member of the Federalist Society.

And from the same site, the nfra:

The National Federation of Republican Assemblies is a grassroots movement to take back the Republican Party for the vast and disenfranchised majority of its members: Reagan conservatives, who believe in small government, lower taxes, free market capitalism, a strong defense, the right to life, and a decent America. Dubbed by some “the Tea Party before there was a Tea Party”, Republican Assemblies actively engage in party primaries — endorsing, recruiting and supporting candidates — and provide genuine grassroots muscle each November, as well as in the legislative sessions in between. Join us!

[FSogol]

16. Looks like a common RW grifter driving people to his website with false hopes.

From snopes:

As the quoted portion above illustrates, the "Alzheimer's cure" teased in the headline is not in fact an advance currently applicable to humans. The study's abstract was markedly more cautious in its framing, using words such as "suggest," "potential," and "prevent progression to [Alzheimer's disease]," signaling significant additional research will be required before the findings could be applied to anything that could reasonably be considered a "cure" for Alzheimer's in human beings.

[Cerridwen]

20. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. *sigh* n/t

[uppityperson]

21. Thanks for the SNOPES link saying MOSTLY FALSE

sorry for yelling, but wanted it emphasized.

Damn. I wish it was real, but it looks like lots of qualifiers in there.

[Cerridwen]

23. I agree: I wish it was real.

Thanks for yelling.

It needed to be emphasized.

[LiberalArkie]

27. The original report I read on NIH was that it worked on mice

It has not been tested on Humans as of yet. It is my understanding that mice are used as the makeup of the brain is similar to human.

[LisaL]

56. Genetically modified mice.

It's much easier to genetically modify mice than humans.

[LeftishBrit]

28. Alliance Defense Fund?

Hardline Christian Right group, which gives financial and moral support to Christian Right organizations in Britain, notably the Christian Legal Centre. They helped to fund the 'Wilberforce Academy' meetings that defiled my backyard (Oxford) once a year from 2009 to 2012.

[Cerridwen]

31. You caught that, too? Yep. That's them. n/t

[Demonaut]

65. they are arguing methodology and speculation, the merits of the story have a firm

foundation

this is a weird Snopes "false"

[1StrongBlackMan]

15. I haven't heard of him ...

but I have heard some of the research Docs at my University talking about this. In fact, they were talking about how the discovery that led to this discovery, changed the science.

[FSogol]

17. Check out the Snopes link in post #14.

Stanford might be on the right track, but Martin is making exaggerated claims.

[1StrongBlackMan]

26. Here is the article that the Docs pointed me to ...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150601122445.htm

[Stellar]

38. hey thanks for sharing... NT

[FSogol]

61. Thanks. n/t

[Demonaut]

66. see below, incredible!

"The discovery was made possible by the work of Antoine Louveau, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Kipnis' lab. The vessels were detected after Louveau developed a method to mount a mouse's meninges -- the membranes covering the brain -- on a single slide so that they could be examined as a whole. "It was fairly easy, actually," he said. "There was one trick: We fixed the meninges within the skullcap, so that the tissue is secured in its physiological condition, and then we dissected it. If we had done it the other way around, it wouldn't have worked.""

[1StrongBlackMan]

68. I work at a major University with a teaching hospital and a robust bio-medical research effort ...

I make a point of taking a lunch hour a week to poke around the research labs ... the Docs are doing some amazing stuff. My two favorites, of late, is the team that, literally, built eye lids for a child who was born without them. The other, is the Doc that is taking lungs out of bodies, putting them in solutions a rinsing them out (think about cleaning a dirty sponge) and putting it back. The process requires keeping the lung "alive" for the 72 hours that the cleaning process takes. When I last spoke with the Doc has it upon to about 68 hours!

[mopinko]

74. wow.

modern medicine is just knocking my socks off.

[ohheckyeah]

6. I hope this

is true. It's a horrible disease.

[KamaAina]

8. Never heard of him. But the report is from the Torygraph.

Which, while right-leaning, is not a tabloid.

[brush]

9. I hope this is true

If true it's Nobel Prize worthy.

[Thinkingabout]

10. This would be wonderful, hopefully this will be available soon.

[calimary]

11. FANTASTIC!!!!!

Because ... Science.

[1StrongBlackMan]

12. Wow ...

That IS good news!

[dixiegrrrrl]

24. As long as the drug, when developed, is not sold for thousands of $$$ a pop.

Big Pharma, which wrote part of the TPP, wants drugs to be extremely expensive all over the globe.

[LisaL]

55. What drug?

The actual study used genetically modified mice.

[femmocrat]

13. Sounds very promising!

The sooner the better!

[Spazito]

18. Here is the research information from Stanford itself...

Blocking receptor in brain's immune cells counters Alzheimer's in mice, study finds

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2014/12/blocking-receptor-in-brains-immune-cells-counters-alzheimers.html

The study was originally published online Dec/2014.

Very promising!

[AuntPatsy]

19. Let's hope

[NightWatcher]

25. Cut these guys a check that would've gone to the War Machine

Imagine what 7 trillion dollars could've gotten us had we not gone to war.

[greyl]

29. And Harvard just cured gullibility. nt

[KamaAina]

30. Ouch!

Yale '85 here.

[LisaL]

51. Apparently it didn't.

[Exilednight]

33. And in other news: Republicans block funding of Alzheimer's drug in fear

Of seniors actually remembering how bad the GOP screwed things up and affraid they may vote for liberals.

[alfredo]

49. Alzheimer's doesn't affect the long term memory until it become more advanced.

The three stage Alzheimer's disease model
Stage 1 – Mild/Early (lasts 2-4 yrs) – Frequent recent memory loss, particularly of recent conversations and events. ...
Stage 2 – Moderate/Middle (lasts 2-10 yrs) – Can no longer cover up problems. ...
Stage 3 – Severe/Late (lasts 1-3+ yrs) – Confused about past and present.

[Purrfessor]

35. Now if they can focus on curing GOPzheimer's Disease...

we might be getting somewhere. Like Democratic control of government.

[Voice for Peace]

36. there's also a great deal of research beginning to happen with cannabis and alzheimer's

which has shown much promise.. I don't have links but
Google has 'em

[F4lconF16]

71. As well as shrooms, acid, dmt, etc.

The psychedelics show enormous potential health benefits.

[Enthusiast]

37. That's nice. Now watch the Pharmaceutical company charge $100,000 per treatment.

[JDPriestly]

39. Mother Jones has an intriguing article on how particles in the air may contribute to

Alzheimers. I think the theory in that article fits with this discovery.

It's in the copy I received in the mail, but I don't find it on the website. am I doing somethin wrong?

[Owl]

40. Please let it be true!!

[Cal Carpenter]

41. Article is written 6 months ago by a hedge fund manager?

Clickbait crap.

Even snopes has covered this:

http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/stanfordalzheimers.asp

[Cal Carpenter]

43. Seriously please consider self-deleting.

Those who struggle daily watching the minds of their loved ones shrink and fade DO NOT need to see misleading clickbait headlines all the fucking time all over the fucking internet.

Especially here on DU when there are plenty of reasonable people pointing out that it is bullshit.

There are plenty of good sources for real analysis of advances in Alzheimers research, and this hedge fund manager (?) is NOT one of them.

[KamaAina]

47. Well, there is a grain of truth here

see post #18 upthread.

[Cal Carpenter]

48. If a grain of truth justifies a misleading clickbait headline

from a hedge fund manager, I guess that's just how it is in your mind.

I will trash this thread and move on. Just know that I am not the only one who finds this incredibly distasteful at best.

[LisaL]

50. Only a grain.

[0rganism]

44. eventually human science will breed a strain of genius immortal mice

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was onto something...

[libodem]

45. Praise the Goddess!

That's good news!

[Codeine]

54. Not quite as much as you might think. . .

See the Snopes link.

[kristopher]

52. Mar 2015 - Australian researchers claim cure with ultrasound.

New Alzheimer’s treatment fully restores memory function
Of the mice that received the treatment, 75 percent got their memory function back.
BEC CREW18 MAR 2015

Australian researchers have come up with a non-invasive ultrasound technology that clears the brain of neurotoxic amyloid plaques - structures that are responsible for memory loss and a decline in cognitive function in Alzheimer’s patients.

If a person has Alzheimer’s disease, it’s usually the result of a build-up of two types of lesions - amyloid plaques, and neurofibrillary tangles. Amyloid plaques sit between the neurons and end up as dense clusters of beta-amyloid molecules, a sticky type of protein that clumps together and forms plaques.

Neurofibrillary tangles are found inside the neurons of the brain, and they’re caused by defective tau proteins that clump up into a thick, insoluble mass. This causes tiny filaments called microtubules to get all twisted, which disrupts the transportation of essential materials such as nutrients and organelles along them, just like when you twist up the vacuum cleaner tube.

As we don’t have any kind of vaccine or preventative measure for Alzheimer’s - a disease that affects 343,000 people in Australia, and 50 million worldwide - it’s been a race to figure out how best to treat it, starting with how to clear the build-up of defective beta-amyloid and tau proteins from a patient’s brain. Now a team from the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at the University of Queensland have come up with a pretty promising solution for removing the former.

Publishing in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes the technique as using a particular type of ultrasound called a focused therapeutic ultrasound...

http://www.sciencealert.com/new-alzheimer-s-treatment-fully-restores-memory-function

[KamaAina]

53. I've heard about that one, too.

[Thespian2]

57. Hope this turns out to be

the break-through scientists have worked for...

[madokie]

58. My mother had dementia in later life

it never was diagnosed but I and my family realized that.
I moved back home to help as I could. Not much more than to get help when it was needed during the night when it was something out of my pay grade. I was like a mother is with her babies. In fact I've been a lite sleeper ever since that period in my life, 25 or so years ago.

I learned a lot about me during those times.

[GarColga]

59. Yeah, I don't get these kinds of stories

Last edited Mon Jun 15, 2015, 09:11 PM - Edit history (1)

Alzheimer's is a disease that is 100% fatal. If you don't die of something else first, a person has about 10 years to live after diagnosis. The forgetfulness, the confusion, that's only the beginning. Parts of the brain are shut down until the sufferer can no longer breathe. If you ever saw the withered husk of someone in the late stages of Alzheimer's Disease you would never again think of it as "dementia."

[Omaha Steve]

60. K&R!

[Babel_17]

62. That's great news. (I use FAH to help research like this.)

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=Babel-17

It's not for everyone but it is interesting if you don't mind an application that will run your system hot.

I have one of those expensive videocard/gpu's that are very efficient at running FAH so I use that instead of my CPU. My brother-in-law tried it in his Dell PC with the CPU and it ran too hot and loud for him.

But if you are a PC guru it's doable. I set my gpu to run at 40% speed and it doesn't get too hot, or the fans too loud.

Sorry for the OT. I don't think FAH was directly responsible for this, though FAH was created by Stanford. Maybe all the research is connected, in a way. Looks possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home#Alzheimer.27s_disease
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home

https://folding.stanford.edu/

[Babel_17]

63. And I've been taking a new form of curcumin, it's a lipid, and in free form

It's called Longvida. It sounds interesting. Wish it was less expensive.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

78. It's turmeric.

And Longvida is the PRODUCT name of overpriced turmeric with added lethicin. Not a "free form".
Companies do that all the time. Take an herb, say their version is "optimized" and other ad words, then charge out the ass for it. No FDA approval, no oversight, turmeric and lethicin in a gelcap, $90 for 60 caps. And people accuse BigPharma for overcharging. BigNatural is just as bad.

[Babel_17]

79. What I've read suggests otherwise

http://longvida.com/references/

http://alzheimer.neurology.ucla.edu/Curcumin.html

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01811381?term=Frautschy&rank=1

In contrast, untagged or free curcumin readily penetrates the brain and free curcumin levels in the blood correlate positively with levels in the brain in animal studies. Dr. Frautschy received a National Institute of Health drug development grant U01AG028583 a Drug Development grant to develop a formulation of curcumin that can be taken orally and penetrate the brain. This led to development of a solid lipid particle formulation of curcumin patented by UC Regents and Veteran's Affairs and licensed to Verdure Sciences as Longvida. Each capsule is 500 mg (125 mg of curcumin). Verdure Sciences is certifed for Good Manufacturing Practice, ensuring the absence of toxic metals and using organically grown turmeric. DiSilvestro et.al., at Ohio State University found that the Longvida curcumin formulation reduced plasma levels of beta-amyloid as well as cholesterol and markers of inflammation in plasma of 40-60 year old subjects.

We are now conducting a clinical trial to determine Longvida's effects in subjects at risk for Alzheimer's.

Though, yeah, a lot of skepticism is warranted given the manner of how many curcumin formulations are marketed. Though, generally, curcumin is good stuff for lots of things. It's just oversold in as far as what regular short term dosages can accomplish.

P.S. Amazon has it for much less, $37 for 60 capsules. I take the powder to save even a bit more. The product name for that is Nutrivene. Longvida allows companies to market the product for which they have the license. "This led to development of a solid lipid particle formulation of curcumin patented by UC Regents and Veteran's Affairs and licensed to Verdure Sciences as Longvida."
Fwiw, I have no stake in any company selling this, or Amazon, or anything like that.

[Babel_17]

80. ClinicalTrials.gov

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01811381?term=Frautschy&rank=1

This study is currently recruiting participants. (see Contacts and Locations)
Verified January 2015 by Department of Veterans Affairs
Sponsor:
Department of Veterans Affairs
Information provided by (Responsible Party):
Department of Veterans Affairs

Curcumin and Yoga Therapy for Those at Risk for Alzheimer's Disease

Drug: Curcumin
Subjects will take 800 mg of curcumin in 4 capsules BID per day prior to meals
Other Name: Longvida Curcumin (Verdure Sciences, Indianapolis)
Behavioral: aerobic yoga
Each week, subjects will attend two one hour aerobic yoga classes under the supervision of certified yoga instructors and complete two 30 minute aerobic yoga practice sessions at home.

[Demonaut]

64. wow, I hope this is not swept under rug, even the venerated and beloved Ronald Reagun succumbed to

this terrible disease.

[niyad]

67. sounds promising

[Not a Fan]

69. Alzheimer's - how to PREVENT it.

That discusses how it happens and how they might be able to fix it.

This explains how to avoid it altogether.

(Long known: Vitamin D3 crosses the blood/brain barrier and removes the beta amyloid that is partially complicit in Alzheimer's. Just google that.)

From the American Academy of Neurology

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 PM ET,
August 06, 2014


Study: Link Between Vitamin D and Dementia Risk Confirmed

"“We expected to find an association between low Vitamin D levels and the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, but the results were surprising—we actually found that the association was twice as strong as we anticipated,” said study author David J. Llewellyn, PhD, of the University of Exeter Medical School in the United Kingdom."

(snip)

"People with lower levels of vitamin D were nearly 70 percent more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and those who had severe deficiency were over 120 percent more likely to develop the disease."
.
Link Between Vitamin D and Dementia Risk Confirmed

There is a great deal of other research available on this connection as well.

.

[Liberal_in_LA]

70. !

[burrowowl]

72. K&R

Interesting!

[PatrickforO]

75. Wow, that's GREAT! Gosh, when it finally comes out for humans, most of us won't have access!

Because we have RATIONED health care.

[spanone]

76. k&r...

[blackspade]

84. This is beyond awesome.

Now if it's just affordable.....

[Gloria]

88. Take tocotrienols to protect your white matter...

glutathione protects against glycation...avoid the sugar

Phosphotidlserine (sp) to keep your choline levels up

Exercise to keep the blood flowing

Fish oil, krill oil...

Clear all the crap out!