Comment by pedalpete
6 months ago
We work in neurostimulation and sleep, and collaborate with Alzheimer's researchers.
The Amyloid hypothesis is not disproven, it is still ONE of the primary candidates for AD.
The problem with any Alzheimer's research is that the disease is still not well understood. It is likely that multiple diseases are being bundled in as a single disease. The tests for AD, are somewhat rudimentary. Beginning with psychological and neurological tests, the blood work to rule out other conditions, followed by a PET scan to look for brain atrophy, and CSF measures for amyloid and tau levels.
It seems almost like they're basically ruling out any disease we can actually measure for and then if it isn't one of those, it's AD.
Does this mean the Amyloid hypothesis is wrong? Unlikely. Is it incomplete? Absolutely!
But articles shouting that all the research should be thrown out are not helpful .
The AD community know that they don't understand the disease, and though therapeutics have been mostly focused on amyloid and tau, research into how the disease works continues.
> But articles shouting that all the research should be thrown out are not helpful .
Good thing OP isn't one, then. In fact it makes a pretty similar point: all the non-amyloid research also should not have been thrown out. Or rather, killed before it got that far; you can decide whether that's equivalent or worse.
Not thrown out - just not funded. But that is a question more re: how great the judgement of the NIH program managers/officers are, as well as whether there should be a healthier alternative funding mechanism to NIH dominated research funding for academia...
I.e. if one has a good pitch for an experimental direction, in an ideal world, the program managers would be an equal opportunity funder and arrange for diverse study sections evaluating proposals etc. But there can only be so many NIH program managers, maybe even less in today's DOGE-ey/RFKj climate, so then in another ideal world, there would be private funders, foundations, etc. But no one wants those because they're not structured w/ matching/overhead funds for academic centers. ergo, maybe the government should fund matching for private research foundation grants...but one would assume government that is in a funding, Keynesian mood vs. a cutting-the-budget mood...
> Not thrown out - just not funded.
Yes, that would be the "killed before it got that far" option I mentioned.
It seems involves some kind of metabolic disturbance, is there any explanation for this? https://academic.oup.com/metallomics/article/9/8/1106/601364...
Could the Amyloid/tau hypothesis be a cart before the horse situation? It is my understanding that the current hypothesis is that the buildup of these proteins causes Alzheimer's. Could it be that Alzheimer's causes these proteins to build up?
It could be. That's why we need more research. Well funded and not vilified.