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Alzheimer's Disease: A "Whole Body" Problem?

posted by martyb on Friday November 03 2017, @02:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the progress-against-a-nasty-disease dept.

takyon writes:

https://news.ubc.ca/2017/10/31/alzheimers-disease-might-be-a-whole-body-problem/

Alzheimer's disease, the leading cause of dementia, has long been assumed to originate in the brain but new research indicates that it could be triggered by breakdowns elsewhere in the body.

The findings, published today in Molecular Psychiatry [DOI: 10.1038/mp.2017.204] [DX], offer hope that future drug therapies might be able to stop or slow the disease without acting directly on the brain, which is a complex, sensitive and often hard-to-reach target. Instead, such drugs could target the kidney or liver, ridding the blood of a toxic protein [amyloid-β protein] before it ever reaches the brain.

"Alzheimer's disease is clearly a disease of the brain, but our research shows that we need to pay attention to the whole body to understand where it comes from, and how to stop it," said Dr. Weihong Song, UBC psychiatry professor.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @09:18AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @09:18AM (#592117)

    As part of this a friend of mine and I have been discussing checks that you can make against your brain to confirm your mental ability and then commit these to habit.

    Once you get past your peak your general trajectory is deterioration for most stuff, BUT you can still enjoy life. And as long as you're having a decent quality of life and not being a big burden or problem for others why kill yourself? Just because you're starting to forget stuff or start not being able to do some stuff?

    Most pet dogs don't think that well but lots of people still love them AND want them to still be around. Even the really stupid ones.

    Similarly lots of us don't mind those kind gentle old folks with good hearts even if they're forgetful. Then it's only near the very end that it becomes a big problem, but that's true for the many other ways you can age to death (cancer, heart problems etc).

    So maybe what might help is training yourself and your character so that even if you're a forgetful person you'd still be a nice forgetful person that normal people are happy to be with. There are some paranoid and angry forgetful people who accuse other people of stealing stuff, get angry and make a huge fuss for small stuff, etc.

    Unfortunately there are cases of nice people being changed by Alzheimer's to becoming nasty people, not everyone though.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @06:36PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @06:36PM (#592254)

    Just sayin'.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @04:40PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @04:40PM (#593154)
      Which is what you might want to happen too, but there's probably still like about 10+ years before things get that bad.