Comment by brandonb

I am not personally aware of any treatment for which there is particularly compelling evidence that it meaningfully slows progression even when started early. I wish there was.

It’s also not clear that one can measure progression well enough that an n=1 data point is meaningful. And I’m also far from convinced that very early Alzheimer’s that would progress rapidly enough to be noticeable can be detected with enough specificity to rule out fairly common cases of people who test positive but effectively don’t have the disease.

Best wishes to your friend’s wife.

Creatine supplementation is showing some promising indications of being a low cost, mild to moderate intervention https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-modern-brain/202...

> the medication she's on stopped its progression

what medication is that?

what? there aren't any treatments that stop alzheimers, there are some that help manage symptoms

Hi there. Actually, Leqembi is a 1st gen Alzheimer’s drugs and targets amyloid plaques. But, like other responses, amyloids doesn’t seem to be hugely responsible for Alzheimers, which is why targeting things like tau proteins is being explored.

> anti-amyloid drugs

Isn’t the viewpoint in the last decade that amyloid plaques are likely a finding rather than the underlying cause of Alzheimer’s Disease?

if cholesterol predicted future cognitive health we wouldn’t need dedicated tests, do we?

You can do all that without an expensive blood test.

There is an oral PCSK9 treatment (enlicitide) was recently released that provides a 30% reduction, and of course you can't get insurance coverage without the test. And there are 2 drugs with 90%+ reduction in Lp(a) in phase3 trials with expected release in 2027-8, in particular Olpasiran.

I know it’s a joke but then you’ll leave your family bearing the burden of your care. As someone whose parents had dementia, finding a place that treats your parents with dignity is extremely expensive and very rare. We were spending 12k/month and even we needed to set up camera’s and my sister slept with my mom and took care of her like a nurse. When the pandemic hit my sister couldn’t enter so every morning they took my mom, clothed her and sat her facing the bathroom all day long.

The only other alternative is some sort of mental hospital which is more like a prison than anything else.

The sad fact is that some people really should. Many people find it far easier to be or become indigent and fall on Medicaid services. If you do not qualify for Medicaid, then there is a real possibility that your insurance carrier will help put you or your caregivers into massive debt for a long-term illness like this.

If you do go into long-term care, Medicaid will probably seize your assets to help pay for everything. For example, a house in your name. They'll use those to pay back what they paid for your care.

So if you're gonna get sick and you're gonna be a burden in your old age, best to plan for leaving this world the way you came in: naked and penniless.

I do think telling you to get your affairs in order and to arrange for hospice care is probably good for the doctors. They don't want a family coming in with a sudden decline case and all the information about how to pay for it lost, at minimum

While I’ve nothing to say about these research scientists in particular, knowing precisely nothing about them, it wouldn’t be the first time that so-called ‘bonafide’ research scientists made a statistical boo-boo, even one structural to the research thesis than any sort of math error.

Given the widely-reported extent of p-hacking in the biomedical literature over the decades, I’m surprised anyone would float an avid ‘but how could research scientists ever be wrong’ default reflex.

thanks!