Posted 8/19/24
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well. -Psalm 139:14
Why is a cure so stinking hard to find??? I mean, we have been studying such for decades and decades!!!
Here are a few good reasons:
- The Blood Brain Barrier (BBB)-The brain, thankfully, is resistant to things reaching it. We were created with a nifty protective moat around our brain that allows the good stuff in and keeps out the bad stuff. However, some meds and treatments are seen as the bad stuff…and the brain says “Nope”.
- Folks aren’t exactly lining up to give brain biopsies. Even I am resistant to that idea and I have had 5 lumbar punctures, 4 thigh biopsies, enough PET Scans with tracers to light up a small town, and more poking and prodding than a elementary school teacher’s holiday and theme bulletin board. However, cracking into my skull seems iffy.
- The brain matter they do get often comes from someone already compromised (a volunteer in a surgery) and/or a cadaver. For a while we knew about as much about actual tissue from hideous Nazi atrocities 80+ years ago than from ethical science.
- Speaking of ethics, there is resistance for some good reason to testing on similar creatures to humans. We are a kind culture in some ways, and this is one way. (I have different opinions in this topic, but I will hold those back)
- Shrodinger’s Cat-ishness 🙂 OK, I am not that smart. HOWEVER- Just figuring things out in this amazing brain by opening it up can change the disprove what we have learned… Summary: Open up the noggin and the environment changes.
- The brain is super complex and has an amazing ability to do workarounds. We just don’t know nearly as much as we would like to know.
- God is Sovereign and we are not. We will always only live for 100-130 years max. Something will get us before we get too far down the road…. You can debate this one separately.
Enter this article from the ever-amazing Washington University (St. Louis):
I will let ChatGPT summarize this a bit for fun:
“Researchers at Washington University have found a new way to study late-onset Alzheimer’s disease by turning skin cells from patients into brain cells in the lab. This method lets them study the disease without needing a brain biopsy, and the lab-grown brain cells show key signs of Alzheimer’s, like buildup of certain proteins.
They discovered that changes in specific genes with age are linked to Alzheimer’s. Using a drug called lamivudine helped reduce some of the disease’s effects in these brain cells. This new approach, published on August 2 in Science, could lead to better ways to understand and treat late-onset Alzheimer’s. Future research will look at including more types of brain cells to get a clearer picture of the disease.”
Pretty amazing. It reminds me a little of the first time I saw the internet. In the mid- to late-80s a great friend had a modem on his little Mac that would dial into Bulletin boards online that you could actually use to carry on conversations! Who knew such vicariousness would ever be a thing??? Now, a couple decades later, we make skin cells into brain cells then test the dickens out of them! No skull drill required! BBB may need some simulation work, but it can be figured out. Is this a cure? Not yet, but it is a step in the right direction without which Lamivudine may not have been considered as an option to help address this aspect of the disease.
To me, an armchair brain studier with a slightly above mediocre brain, sees a cure playing out:
I…and far more importantly, the Alzheimer’s Association take kind of a multi-cause approach to the research cause. It is 100% certain that Beta Amyloid plaque and Tau tangles are hallmarks of the disease, but they may be more like a scab on a wound. We know they aren’t good. The 2 new drugs (Leqembi and Kisunla) have been shown to delay the progression of the disease by removing all of the Beta Amyloid plaque. It does slow the disease, so it must fit in the puzzle somehow. Therefore, this is what I suspect that a cure will look like:
Something to get rid of the plaque/tangles
Something to address inflammation
Something to address the gut biome and immunology
Lifestyle changes…several of them (BP, sugar management, sleep studies, etc…)
It will be a changing of the environment that pushes the brain past the tipping point that leads to cell death and ultimately loss of brain mass, inability to do ADLs (the stuff required to live well), and eventually becoming disabled and passing away. If we can push back the disease for, say, 30-40 years, which may very well happen pretty soon, and the average age of onset is, say, the 70s, there will be bigger fish to fry than a 100-120 year-old just starting to have cognitive concerns. That is my biggest hope…other than the Lord’s return which would simplify all of this mess. 🙂 No cancer in heaven either. 🙂 No pain. No sadness. Just joy. 🙂 Praying and studying…that is my game plan.
Every day we move the needle in the right direction…
#EndALZ
Note: This research is not seeking neurogenesis–the regrowing of what is gone, a task that every neuroscientist I have spoken to rolls his/her eyes at the possibility of. It is merely having a test bed that allows for more accurate research. They are editing the cell to allow it to look like a duck and quack like a duck so they can test on it like a duck instead of the turkey they are putting a plastic bill on now. 🙂 Brains are hard to test stuff on (see the rest of the article). Therefore, if we can create models that look like this kind of cell, they can grow Beta Amyloid, cause inflammation, and do other stuff, then rectify it and see the results of various activities on it. It is truly fascinating. 🙂 HOWEVER, PREVENTION IS STILL OUR BEST PLAN! According to Lancet, Harvard, among other places, 30 to as much as 45% or more of the cases could have been prevented. 🙂
