On 5/2/2011 3:04 PM, Ed Friedman wrote:
...
Post by Ed FriedmanOf course, Alzheimer's is not as simple as just being a hormone
deficiency disease. There must be a separate trigger(s) that raises the
beta amyloid levels. I view hormones as a way to neutralize the
biochemical reactions that would otherwise lead to full-blown
Alzheimer's disease. I find it amusing that description of research into
this disease seems to discuss the search for a drug(s) that blocks the
specific biochemical reactions associated with Alzheimer's while
ignoring the fact that hormones already do exactly what they are looking
for. If I were a cynic, I might think that researchers are searching for
a patentable drug to make themselves rich while ignoring hormones, since
hormones cannot be patented. In reality, I personally believe that
researchers are convinced that hormones are out of the question because
of their (bogus) link to cancer.
Ed Friedman
There was a stir a few years ago about AD being a type III diabetes,
i.e., that it has to do with inability to transport insulin into brain
cells. See for example:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070926113835.htm
I once sat at dinner with an endocrinologist and diabetes expert from
Hopkins and asked him about it but he thought the theory was completely
wrong.
I know that there is some evidence that ABeta formation in the brain is
not a cause of AD but a response to it. Some experiments seem to
indicate that clearing ABeta has no effect on reducing dementia and may
even increase it. If I remember correctly, Tanzi mentions this in his
talk. The aborted anti-ABeta vaccine from Elan Pharmaceuticals
apparently succeeded in reducing ABeta in humans but did not reduce
dementia and caused serious side effects.
It seems to me that we're getting closer to understanding this disease
but we still have a good way to go. Quite understandably, people are
attempting to produce treatments with a very incomplete picture of the
process they're attempting to interrupt. I hope they succeed, but I
suspect we're going to need a fair amount of additional basic research
before we get a real treatment. It's not yet clear what the real
targets for drug therapy should be, much less what the drugs ought to be
like.
But I'm hopeful, if not for people my age (I'll be 65 this month), then
for my children and their children. Who knows. Maybe if I can hold off
another ten years (I'm working on it if PCa doesn't get me first :-)
something might even be helpful for me.
Now here's a question for you:
Have you seen the recent research claiming a negative association
between cancer and AD? People who get cancer apparently have
significantly less likelihood of getting AD and vice versa. It's
apparently not just survivor bias (the cancer folks die too young to get
AD.) The person who discovered this speculates that tumors upregulate a
gene needed for their survival and AD downregulates the same gene.
Alan