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Posted by chiefalchemist 5 hours ago

Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?(freakonomics.com)
113 points | 54 commentspage 2
justinator 2 hours ago|
We just keep forgetting about it!
cookiengineer 2 hours 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-he...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11485228/

[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742...

[4] https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/shingles-vaccine...

anon84873628 1 hour ago||
Gee, that sure is a confident statement of fact.

Or maybe virus activity is one way that a negative feedback loop involving protein aggregates can begin...

nickburns 42 minutes ago||
Sure is a line of inquiry worth pursuing either way, no?
josh-wrale 1 hour ago||
Not always. Genetic causes are known.
eagsalazar2 2 hours 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.
huflungdung 3 hours ago||
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tim-tday 3 hours ago||
The science was delayed a decade due to fraud.
ekianjo 3 hours ago||
Not just a decade
onesandofgrain 3 hours ago||
Can u tell me what this is about?
dillydogg 3 hours ago|||
I liked the story as told here in Science: https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabricatio...
buescher 3 hours ago|||
The amyloid hypothesis and associated fraud covered in the TFA.
omeysalvi 3 hours ago||
It is a "There is No Antimemetics Division" kind of scenario. They discover the cure and then keep forgetting it.
ki4jgt 3 hours 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 3 hours 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.
CodeWriter23 2 hours 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 2 hours 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...

ki4jgt 2 hours ago|||
True dat. But most of Europe calls it type-3 diabetes, because of the reasons given.
xattt 2 hours ago||
Are recurrent childhood neglect and abuse events not an antecedent to mental health morbidity in adulthood, which then creates missed opportunities for growth and necessitates and the need for the use of medications?

I think you’re making a giant leap from A to Z and missing a whole bunch in between.

ki4jgt 2 hours ago|||
All I know is that people with higher ACE scores have higher dementia rates. And that higher ACE scores are linked with heart failure, lung failure, and kidney failure.

Stress ages the body. Homeless people can age several years, being on the streets for just a few months.

I've also seen numerous people in these upbringings die in their 50s and 60s from kidney failure. My stepdad was one of them. My father too.

My father had a normal childhood, except he had a traumatic experience of shooting his twin brother while they were playing cowboys and indians. Spent his entire life blaming himself. Went through all the normal development phases. Not on any meds.

His body just started shutting down prematurely. It's common in people with those experiences. First, his breathing got bad. Then his kidneys. Then he started having heart problems.

And that's the pattern. Heart, lungs, kidneys. Which are all linked to the brain. And eventually lead to dementia-like symptoms. At least that's what the research on ACEs seems to point out.

ki4jgt 2 hours ago|||
And the pattern holds in people who suffer excessive bullying, societal excommunication or exile, domestic violence, or social stigma.

Marginalized people have a high death rate in their 50s and 60s, because of societal bullshit -- no other factors needed.

PaulKeeble 4 hours 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-...). 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.

IanGallacher 43 minutes ago||
It is a crime and a tragedy how criminally underfunded ME/CFS is.

I'll probably be downvoted for this, but I honestly think quality of life of CFS is lower than Alzheimer's.

I truly wish that disease funding was based on science and metrics rather than marketing and vibes.

That being said, Alzheimer's absolutely deserves it's funding and it is very sad to see setbacks related to fraud.

avazhi 3 hours ago||
No clue why you think chronic fatique syndrome and dementia ought to be treated as equally debilitating or serious by the medical community, but I'm sure you're the only person on this earth who holds that opinion.

Naturally, the far more terrifying and inexorable disease that is incurable and robs people of their entire personality and will affect most of us to some extent (dementia, if not Alzheimer's specifically) by the end of our lives gets more funding and attention, as it should. The way Alzheimer's has been researched and funded is diabolical, though, but you might pick any other of 200 serious progressive neurological disorders that are underfunded and underrepresented over... CFS. CFS isn't even fully accepted as a syndrome at this point - long COVID is probably more accepted as a real thing by practitioners at this point than CFS.

klipt 3 hours 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 2 hours ago|||
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