[DarkmSparks]

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can lead to the rapid formation of amyloid plaques....

So entirely possible they are simply part of how or brain deals with brain cell death.

Its possible at this point it's not a "disease" at all, at least no more than the STI we are all dieing from (our parents had sex and now we get to die).

Prior to 1900 or so, average life expectancy was something like 25 or 30, our brains simply never evolved to live as long as they do now, some people age faster than others..

The problem for the scientific basis is all the brain research has gone into plaques and ignored all the other conditions that lead to cell death and aging, it's going to be a while before other directions can be properly explored, and plaques for sure still have the momentum despite failing at every turn.

[anon84873628]

Plaques have not failed at every turn. This seems to be a myth repeated every time an article like this pops up. Yes there were specific instances of fraud, but this did not invalidate the whole research avenue. Researchers are in fact doing exactly what you suggest, and understanding plaques is a lever into those underlying dysfunctions... Like say circadian rhythm perhaps.

And I don't know why you would talk about average life expectancy when median expectancy or expectancy at adolescence are much more relevant metrics (that probably don't agree with your point).

[DarkmSparks]

Name a single success.

The best treatments on the market slows cognative decline measurements for up to 6 months "maybe" (could just be the result of pain relief), dates back to like 2001, and have nothing to do with amyloids.

>but this did not invalidate the whole research avenue

Indeed, multiple treatments in very expensive human trials based on the research avenue failing to show any kind of measurable clinical efficacy invalidates the research area.

The latest being from just a few days ago

https://www.biospace.com/drug-development/alector-scraps-dem...

[pedalpete]

You're confusing repairing the damage with the cause.

Just because amyloid/tau cause the damage, that doesn't mean removing them repairs.

If rust weakens a structural piece of steel, removing the rust does not repair the integrity of the steel.

[DarkmSparks]

There is exactly zero evidence to show they cause the damage, the only evidence that once existed to say they caused the damage used 100% faked results, which didnt emerge until after the treatments based on it causing the damage failed to show any clinical benefit and stanford launched an investigation into the prof whose students produced the evidence.

They created several treatments that stopped them forming (most prominent being biogens). The result was no difference in cognitive function vs placebo and some 20% of the people who took it suffering from a heamoralgic stroke (which they covered up).

[pas]

sources please!?

there's a reason that 18% of clinical trials around drugs against Alzheimer's still target plaques

also the etiological model evolved a lot (as others pointed out, it's removing blockage after the pipe has ruptured still can lead to a sinkhole forming later)

https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/trc...

also some nuance regarding the scientific fraud and the Amyloid mafia https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/reaction-alzheimer...

[DarkmSparks]

There are no sources, that is the definition of zero evidence.

Also, The fraud was found because the theory was invalidated, not the other way around. It was found that real life did not match the theory (by spending billions on human trials that all failed), so they looked back at the theory and found the results were fake.

There is however evidence that it doesnt. E.g. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/1...

But it was and continues to be ignored.

[anon84873628]

There is success every time we understand a new detail about how/why plaques form, how to detect them, and how to remove them. The science is pointing to a world where treating people much earlier in life (before cognitive symptoms actually appear, before tau forms) is going to prevent disease progression for the majority of people and effectively prevent Alzheimer's.