Beyond headlines of transmitted Alzheimer's, scientists see case for prions

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/research/alzheimers-transmission-medical-procedure-builds-case-prion-theory

by consumer451 • 2 years ago

57 39 2 years ago

giantg24• 2 years ago

Prions are concerning. We know very little about them and have no cures. There are forms for common animals that we eat, like cows. Our processing of these animals leads to 100s or 1000s of unique DNA being identified in a single package of ground beef. They do not test for BSE unless the cows are symptomatic, but it's unlikely they would be symptomatic when they have a typical market time of only 18 months. BSE is thought to be a potential cause of CFJ in humans.

In my opinion, our industrialization of the food supply will lead to mass prion distribution/infection at some point.

jajag• 2 years ago

It already has with the BSE crisis, and I'm not sure if we 100% understand how close to a much greater crises we came. I remember there was period in the UK back in the nineties where there was the grim prospect of hundreds of thousands of cases - thankfully it never came close to that. And there are European countries where I still can't donate blood, because I lived in the UK during the outbreak.

giantg24• 2 years ago

"I'm not sure if we 100% understand how close to a much greater crises we came."

That's basically my point. It doesn't seem like we changed our practices that much. I would have thought we'd test the animals, process them separately, etc.

Mordisquitos• 2 years ago

Prions are indeed very concerning on a concrete per-instance basis, but —unlike viruses— not that concerning in the abstract as a generic threat. Prions as a phenomenon do not exploit an essential feature of our metabolism, and cannot 'evolve' per se, but are limited to the specific cases in which a) a given protein sequence can stably misfold rendering it ineffective, b) exposure of already functionally 'eufolded' proteins to the misfolded one can trigger subsequent misfolding, and c) misfolded versions of the protein can and do consistently come in contact with non-misfolded functional ones.

I'm not trying to downplay the threat and incredible difficulty of preventing known prion diseases, particularly with regards to destroying the infectious prions. However, to illustrate the rarity of the phenomenon on a per-protein basis, consider how the processes involved in cooking have themselves been denaturing (i.e. mifolding) an unimaginable number of all kinds of proteins in a myriad of ways all since human prehistory, and yet we have no known examples nor even hints of new prions having been created in the process.

lumost• 2 years ago

The mass processing of food could be the additional mechanism allowing mass distribution of prions, no?

Through processed foods, an apex predator like humanity comes into contact with proteins from several orders magnitude more animals than our ancient hunter gatherers or farmers. This problem is compounded as our livestock eat processed foods themselves.

Perhaps prions were not as dangerous for most of evolutionary history as they simply lacked a distribution vector?

giantg24• 2 years ago

If the feed restrictions don't work, we don't have any checks in place. With stuff like CAFOs and an 18 month time to market, it's possible we create conditions that can spread prions quickly buy they get to slaughter before they become symptomatic. We won't know until it's already a massive issue.

sigmoid103• 2 years ago

The headline is wrong. The case is not for prions, but for prion-like behaviour in amyloid beta plaques. They found that this could have been a cause of transmission in rare cases where people received hGH sourced from contaminated cadavers and 5 out of 1800 developed early onset Alzheimer's. But they also had 200+ other people develop Creutzfeldt-Jakob, which is actually known to be caused by prions. So there might be some similarity that enables transmission in a related way. Or there might just be related symptoms. Either way, it is completely irrelevant for normal people, unless you eat squirrel brains or ground up beef imported from Britain in the 90s.

amluto• 2 years ago

Unless I missed something, it’s weaker than that. What’s the evidence that the contaminant that transmitted Alzheimer’s was amyloid beta or even a related substance?

The hGH was inadequately purified. It seems likely to have contained multiple different contaminants.

sigmoid103• 2 years ago

That's why I explicitly said could in italics. Because not even that is certain.

jeswin• 2 years ago

But they also had 200+ other people develop Creutzfeldt-Jakob

Goodness! 200 out of 1800 subjects developing CJD is the scariest thing I saw in that study. It isn't many folds away from being an extinction level threat. Makes me worry about exponentially rising compute capability.

Either way, it is completely irrelevant for normal people, unless you eat squirrel brains or ground up beef imported from Britain in the 90s.

Most cases of CJD we see are sporadic CJD. It's rare, but also the scariest struggle I've ever seen.

coffeebeqn• 2 years ago

It’s interesting how popular Alzheimer’s research is on HN. I don’t really see any other website talk about it. I have multiple grandparents who were destroyed by it. I guess it is a scary future to look to

tyfighter• 2 years ago

I appreciate that HN follows the research, and have wondered if others have had the same experience as me. My mother was diagnosed with Early-Onset Alzheimer's at age 57 in 2013. The progression was slow at first, but it was a major problem for our family by 2017, and she died at 65 in 2022. My dad died of health issues seriously exacerbated by grief of what had happened. It destroyed my family. I'm still in my 30s and both of my parents are gone. This all happened during what are supposed to be the most critical years of a person's tech career. I am almost done with handling my parent's affairs, and am preparing to make major changes to my life again.

Alzheimer's is a terrible disease that is going to wreck havoc on the lives of of countless millenials/genzs as their baby boomer parent's age into it. We need to understand this disease as soon as possible.

y-c-o-m-b2• 2 years ago

The nuance, thankfully, is far less frightening, at least from a public health standpoint. A case series published Jan. 29 in Nature Medicine by scientists at University College London reported that five patients who were given growth hormones derived from human cadavers as part of a now-obsolete childhood medical treatment later developed early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

I'm currently under investigation of early-onset dementia due to significant cognitive decline in the last year or so with the earliest of symptoms being noticed about 6 years ago. This topic is particularly interesting because I had a cervical spine fusion 6 years ago with a cadaver bone used from an elderly patient. That was the beginning of my journey in hell. It seems extremely unlikely that was a route for transmitting anything to me, but nevertheless the topic posed in this article and the underlying reference articles makes me wonder. If anything, I'm grateful that it's being looked at more closely.

aantix• 2 years ago

I'm sorry that you're going through this.

I know this is a shot in the dark, I posted this the other day. There's a correlation between poor oral hygiene and dementia/Alzheimer's.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/good-oral-healt...

My dad had an infection in his teeth and died with cognitive decline.

The infection isn't always visible, even with a standard X-ray from the dentist.

You'll want to get a "cone CT scan". Not every dentistry will have this equipment. But it's your best bet for finding a festering, chronic dental inflammation.

bitwize• 2 years ago

Brush and floss religiously, folks. Tooth bacteria can migrate and be implicated in all sorts of shit: heart disease, colon cancer, dementia.

lambdaba• 2 years ago

Give zerocarb, particularly high fat zerocarb a chance. Ketones heal the brain. Metabolic theory of dementia too. It's still making its way up to the mainstream but it'll eventually get there.

loa_in_• 2 years ago

But you need to be aware that low carb high fat diet does come with slower thinking. It's temporary but you will be tempted to ditch it to "keep up" with outside demand

zhivota2• 2 years ago

Are you willing to share more about how you detected/measured the decline?

I have felt a bit paranoid it's happening to me but I'm not sure how to be sure.

y-c-o-m-b2• 2 years ago

Sorry to respond late, not sure if you will see this. My primary concerns are the fact that I hallucinate (animals, people, objects), get lost/confused in my own neighborhood, and memory issues (can't recall family member names, word finding issues, and can't keep count to 10 when I'm exercising for example). Now this is tricky because I've also had schizotypal personality disorder and ADHD since my teens, but never any visual hallucinations or memory problems until recently. My hallucinations are not the scary type either. For example I'll hallucinate seeing a large cat run down my hallway and I'll step out of the way for it, except I don't have any pets. A 4x4 post can briefly turn into a person. Lastly I was given a brief cognitive test in my doctor's office and I scored at the same level as someone with dementia.

It's important to emphasize this may not be dementia, and could be something else entirely like hormones, liver, thyroid, or other neurological problems that mimic the symptoms of dementia/alzheimers. That being said, dementia is what my doctor has sent me to a neurologist for and what we're testing for.

bentt• 2 years ago

That could be the most annoying mobile site I can remember. The number of popups and re-layouts is ridiculous.

Beyond headlines of transmitted Alzheimer's, scientists see case for prions

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