WTH Is Cerebrolysin, Actually?

https://moreisdifferent.blog/p/wth-is-cerebrolysin-actually

by surprisetalk • 2 years ago

84 59 2 years ago

rdtsc3• 2 years ago

Pigs were a fortuitous choice due to the fact that they are especially resistant to prion disease

Prions is the first thing that came to mind after reading the description. I had not idea pigs are resistant to it. TIL.

_nalply3• 2 years ago

Perhaps. I wouldn't believe any statements that I learnt today before some research validating it, and even then only give a measure of confidency.

Here I did that for you:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510857/

I trust NIH so my confidence that they write corresponds to truth is high even for the scientific interpretation of truth.

And that's what they wrote:

Pigs were considered prion resistant as no natural cases have been observed despite a large population and being fed intensely with feedstuffs containing animal derived protein. However, it has been demonstrated that BSE is able to infect pigs albeit with low efficiency [...]

So, no, pigs are not resistant but more resistant than cattle and humans.

humanfromearth9• 2 years ago

Let pigs eat the central nervous system and nerves of their own race, you'll see that they are subject to ESB and prions. Cannibalism is not healthy for mammals.

Rebellos• 2 years ago

Great paper! Sorry to nitpick, because your approach is right, but one important detail is wrong - you are not reading what NIH said, but simply a paper made by someone that NIH provides access to. It is important to remember that things on pubmed can be wrong, or subjective and biased.

See header "As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health.", and you can click on "Author information" to learn more about the authors.

nradov• 2 years ago

That article wasn't written by NIH staff. They just host a copy on their website which doesn't imply any endorsement or quality review.

gwern• 2 years ago

So, no, pigs are not resistant but more resistant than cattle and humans.

...what does 'resistant' mean if not 'less likely to be infected than something else is'? Is it not inherently a comparison?

rdtsc3• 2 years ago

So, no, pigs are not resistant but more resistant than cattle and humans.

That's what I meant, sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean that they are 100% immune just that they are more resistant. Perhaps that's the difference between a medical "resistance" vs the colloquial meaning.

I would definitely not jump into drinking raw pig brain smoothies either way and won't advise anyone else to do it either.

metta2uall2• 2 years ago

Well, before HIV came along it was thought that humans were quite resistant to retroviruses...

knodi123• 2 years ago

Okay, so this miracle drug isn't a miracle either. Which miracle drug is?!?! I'm not asking sarcastically or ironically- I'm sincerely begging for miracles. Anyone??

klipt• 2 years ago

Exercise often and eat healthy.

"You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."

isoprophlex• 2 years ago

And don't stress too much, either

brg• 2 years ago

Aspirin, Caffeine for two.

refurb• 2 years ago

Plenty of them, but they tend to be FDA approved.

Take the treatments for spinal muscular atrophy. If you’re born with the worst type, you die before age 2 from respiratory failure.

Today? Start treatment at birth and you live a normal life.

jaggederest2• 2 years ago

Penicillin, polio vaccine, thorazine, morphine, cisplatin, phenol, arguably semaglutide is the most recent.

There have been miracle drugs released every decade or so since the early 1900s.

They're just normal now. They stop being a miracle once we're used to them.

People used to die of fevers. Of sepsis. And there was nothing that could be done. Let alone cancer.

jaggederest2• 2 years ago

Oh I forgot about insulin. A little over 1% of the people currently alive would be rapidly dead without it.

nwienert3• 2 years ago

GLP-1 agonists.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-does-ozempic-cure-all-d...

Beyond their somewhat miraculous effects on obesity, they seem to have a wide variety of positive effects even for non-overweight people. They are likely the best and broadest thing we have for stopping negative addictions. They have incredibly positive effects for immune issues. Plus strong early trial results for Parkinson's, Alzheimers, and heart and kidney disease.

I also think they are underrated and there may be some alpha in them for a few reasons:

1. People seem to hate the idea that someone can "cheat" at losing weight, almost seeming to hope they have some unknown side effect.

2. People seem to dismiss them as "only working because obesity causes all those issues", probably the biggest fallacy as we have evidence already, and I think will find much more, that the addictive, immune, kidney and heart effects are not due to weight loss/fasting.

3. People don't seem to realize how huge a deal it is if they do have a strong effect on immune issues - immune system issues underly so many health issues of different names from allergies to Alzheimers to all sorts of terrible diseases, and I now know a couple non-overweight people who have reported nearly miraculous results with them.

4. Their effects on addiction likewise just by themselves are big. Another friend/smoker since high school, smokes nearly a pack a day tried it and for the first time since HS didn't smoke a cigarette for a whole day - multiple days in a row.

BTW it seems tirzepatide is significantly better for at least some of these effects than semaglutide.

user_7832• 2 years ago

What's slightly interesting to me is that some effects of adhd medications (particularly methylphenidate) sound quite similar - it too (can) change motivation regarding food (and actually can make unhealthy donuts seem disgusting) and of course suppresses apptetite (sometimes a little too much). I'd love to know if anyone who's taken both mph & a GLP-1 agonist how similar/different they are.

(There's other interesting aspects of mph too - like how it can change sensitivities - and actually make light mode not feel like your eyes are on fire! - but that's a comment probably for another time.)

_nalply3• 2 years ago

There’s one dangerous effect of a GLP-1 agonist: delayed emptying of the stomach during surgery. Usually, the stomach should be empty due to the risk of complications (like aspiration). But when one takes a GLP-1 agonist, it is not enough to fast on the same day. When planning surgery, you need to talk with your surgeon. One solution could be to stop taking the agonist seven days before surgery and fast for 24 hours.

There’s an insidious issue: uninformed people tend to quickly assume that the patient is weak-willed and ate even if instructed to come NPO.

Vecr• 2 years ago

The "with diet and exercise" clause is not a joke. You need to think about your nutrition, including protein. Even with a good diet, you're going to lose muscle mass if you don't exercise.

marcinzm• 2 years ago

I also think they are underrated

Not sure if one can call a set of drugs that are so in demand as to be basically impossible to get at times underrated. Possibly random people online say otherwise but the market says the opposite very strongly.

9dev• 2 years ago

Not the answer you’re looking for, but mRNA vaccines as used for COVID are nothing short of a miracle. The bioengineering behind them, the logistics of it all—it was incredible.

kev009• 2 years ago

Maybe if it did what they said it would instead of moving the goal posts around to fit what actually happened.

chriscappuccio• 2 years ago

An incredible waste you mean?

thomasfedb• 2 years ago

Paracetamol (acetaminophen) - a fairly effective, synergistic, non-addictive, predictably dosed, analgesic.

akoboldfrying2• 2 years ago

Which, TTBOMK, we still don't understand the mechanism of at all. But yes, it's fantastic stuff!

The_Colonel• 2 years ago

It's not addictive, but you gain tolerance.

IIRC it's also hard on liver, esp. in combination with alcohol (which js unfortunate since it's otherwise good for hangover).

dillydogg• 2 years ago

I've been told by a number of my attending physicians that it is unlikely that acetaminophen would have received FDA approval if it was being reviewed today because of it' small therapeutic window and unknown mechanism of action

arcticbull2• 2 years ago

Rapamycin, maybe metformin - both for life extension and to reduce the incidence of cancer and CVD.

oezi• 2 years ago

Your question should be split into two parts:

- Miracle drugs for curing ailments. We have plenty of those.

- Miracle drugs for enhancing beyond normal. Many things which work also have serious side-effects. Most things which are peddled with prescription don't have any effect.

pshirshov3• 2 years ago

Thymopoetin analogues (or bovine one but there are more associated risks).A single injection makes you feel tens of years younger for a short time and wipes chronic infections.

emsign• 2 years ago

Ever Pharma’s explanation of how the putative peptides in Cerebrolyin cross the blood-brain barrier does not make sense and flies in the face of scientific research which shows that most peptides do not cross the blood-brain barrier

It can be considered a benefit from a manufacturer's pov that their product doesn't work. If it did their customers would smarten up and stop buying it.

Anyway this looks like your typical "traditional" chinese medicine scam. I mean it has something to do with animal brains, of course it works, right?

vasco2• 2 years ago

It can be considered a benefit from a manufacturer's pov that their product doesn't work. If it did their customers would smarten up and stop buying it.

Even if you are not very smart, doing some tests on yourself seems easy enough. If you pull up any psychology paper on like effecs of CO2 on cognition, and do the tests on yourself, you'd expect to start doing better after a few weeks of taking it, and if not stop. But I think most people that take products to help them improve just go by feel. I read a few nootropics articles back in the day and nobody ever proved any improvement larger than drinking coffee.

darwinaward• 2 years ago

Taking untested drugs is risky because self-testing is unreliable, can lead to serious health problems, and lacks the expert guidance needed to safely assess their effects. Anyone who does this deserves the Darwin award and science CATEGORICALLY advises you to do something else. Those who find medical breakthroughs did not take shortcuts. They are trained and experienced and painstaking.

Do something well tested and proven to work instead and reap the benefits of all of these proven trained professionals. One idea: Acute Sprint Interval Exercise Increases Both Cognitive Functions and Peripheral Neurotrophic Factors in Humans.

gus_massa• 2 years ago

With most test, the problem is that after a few weeks you learn to solve them more efficiently [1] and the improvement can be falsely attributed to the nootropics. Double blind randomized controlled trial or it didn't happen.

[1]In the math class, we call it "studding for the midterm" :)

ipsum2• 2 years ago

Even TCM is more scientifically backed than Cerebrolysin. See the research on cordyceps for example.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-58742-z

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps_militaris#Research

duskwuff• 2 years ago

Or artemisinin, which was discovered by Chinese researchers reviewing TCM texts discussing treatments for malaria. (The lead researcher, Tu Youyou, received a Nobel Prize for her work in 2015.)

RGamma• 2 years ago

Presumably users that inform themselves wouldn't take something that's approximately named "brain dissolvent" anyway.

A_D_E_P_T• 2 years ago

"“nootropics” users be like: develop never-before-seen prion diseases from Belarusian nootropics made from centrifuged pig brains that you take intravenously but it was all worth it to accomplish great things like posting on an internet messageboard about nootropics"

- The Mighty Hakan

Loughla• 2 years ago

I got into nootropics to help me sleep and try to learn how to lucid dream.

I got out of nootropics because anything that can make you lucid dream must have some kind of impact on your brain, and the ENTIRE culture of nootropics is based on being more productive at work (at least the forums I was on).

It was kind of gross, to be honest. Put these chemicals in your body so you can focus x% more at your job. No thank you.

im3w1l• 2 years ago

To me your perspective comes from a narrow view of what a job is. Hours go in money comes out.

But it can be more than that. It can be a calling. A passion. A way to gain immortal glory by being named the discoverer of something. A way to create value and happiness for others.

joseluis• 2 years ago

That's exactly how I see coffee, and I keep stopping taking it and then coming back every few months...

throwaway87483• 2 years ago

Not the "entire" community, the places I spent time on years ago were focused exclusively on improved sleep efficiency, if there is such a thing.

I used piracetam for a few months and functioned well on six hours of sleep per day (the norm is 1.5x that). Remembered dreams pretty well too (I very rarely remember them before or after that period).

It also greatly reduced the effects of alcohol intoxication, but that was more of a downside (strip ethanol of its effects on the mind and you get pure poison).

The were no other noticeable effects, and I stopped taking it because dosages were measured in hundreds of milligrams and I was worried about load on the kidneys.

treprinum• 2 years ago

While the science behind it is shoddy, some people with neuro long covid report significant improvement from it. Perhaps there is some not yet unearthed mechanism making it work in some cases?

boesboes• 2 years ago

Anecdotal evidence is the best evidence! -Dogbert ;)

kalium-xyz2• 2 years ago

In using cerebrolysin I've always assumed that if it is a placebo the rituals and concepts behind it make it a very good placebo. It has a lot of "medical" potency to it because the idea of injecting pig brain "just makes sense". Also I really enjoyed my vacation to eastern Europe to acquire a stash of it.

For its clinical validity I do recall that it passed some clinical trails which I'd need to look up again however like most studies with cerebrolysin it was done in shadier more bribe friendly corners of the globe so its easy to dismiss the positives. Like the study on ADHD in adults done in russia where it massively helped the participants but the sample size was very tiny. Also I highly doubt that it actually cured "mental retardation in children" like some of the packaging claims.

EDIT: here we go for the clinical trails: https://go.drugbank.com/drugs/DB16599

pshirshov3• 2 years ago

Oh well, my doctors thought it "cured" me, but I was misdiagnosed.

pshirshov3• 2 years ago

Well, I've been having daily injections between age 4 and 8. Together with ATP and B1-B6-B12 mix.

Don't think it made any difference, either positive or negative. The doctors thought it did, but I was misdiagnosed and as I learned later my EEG dynamics perfectly followed my real condition (which is expected to show huge improvement in EEGs with age starting around 6/7).

My EEGs are still bad, but not as remarkably bad as they were when I was a kid.

At least my family didn't pay for this questionable stuff, it was a free prescription.

delton137• 2 years ago

Article co-author here... that's super interesting. Would you mind sharing your condition? There's probably better things out there whatever it is...

metta2uall2• 2 years ago

It's very likely much much safer & more effective to boost BDNF, neurogenesis, etc, by doing exercise, eating healthily, sleeping healthily, learning new things, etc...

WTH Is Cerebrolysin, Actually?

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