dudinax t1_ja0tzhu wrote on February 26, 2023 at 12:14 AM

There seem to be hundreds of tantalizing leads about Alzheimers, all going in different directions.

BigOlBro t1_ja18yrf wrote on February 26, 2023 at 2:12 AM

I figure there are multiple ways to Alzheimer, but similarities to each one can help narrow down to one or few true causes. Maybe it isn't insulin itself, but whatever cell/system in the body insulin reacts to that causes Alzheimers. Or maybe a combination of insulin and other drugs/nutrients/etc that triggers some effect. Feels like a job for deep learning ai to find.

Also, some leads might not even be true leads after all.

nomad1128 t1_ja35e27 wrote on February 26, 2023 at 2:30 PM

Blood vessels are the unifying thing. Most established risk factors for Alzheimer's relate to blood vessel health (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, smoking), proxies for bad blood vessels (heart attacks, congestive heart failure, stroke, peripheral artery disease, kidney failure) and aging. Sure enough there is a thing that builds up in blood vessels as we age called medin that seems to be some kind of detritus from stuff that holds vascular cells together. And sure enough there is evidence that blood vessels with medin adjacent to brain lead to amyloid plaques/tangles we have been chasing for decades, but as others have called it, those plaques are the smoke, not the fire.

I suspect when you read about viruses/inflammation being linked to neurodegenerative processes, you're really just talking about leaking medin/other crap into the brain.

I believe an AI study concluded that the strongest risk factor for developing dementia was leaking proteins in the urine. Because proteins aren't supposed to be leaking from anywhere, so if they are leaking in the urine, then they are probably leaking in the brain.

And strongest risk factor for that kind of leaking? Diabetes.

If I were treating stocks like gambling, I would invest it all in any pharmaceutical company that is developing antibody to medin