Complex diseases may have a simple trigger--brain infecting microbes

[Snowdrop]

The article discusses an editorial signed by 39 scientists and points to familiar suspects: Herpes virus, Borellia, and C pneumoniae as possible triggers of disease and specifically Alzheimers.


http://www.livescience.com/54120-controversial-idea-ties-microbes-to-alzheimers.html?cmpid=514645

 

[Dufresne]

I've heard of them finding evidence of spirochetes in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and I wonder why this hasn't been replicated. Has anybody tried? If they can find Bb in Otzi's knee, why wouldn't they be able to find it in the tissues of people who recently died?

Can NGS be used on tissues at this point?

 

[Snowdrop]

I've heard of them finding evidence of spirochetes in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and I wonder why this hasn't been replicated. Has anybody tried? If they can find Bb in Otzi's knee, why wouldn't they be able to find it in the tissues of people who recently died?

Can NGS be used on tissues at this point?

Let's hope that they do replication studies if not done already. I'm not science literate so can't answer any science questions but I do think that we may benefit tangentially from this kind of research.

 

[anciendaze]

Because of the variety of pathogens seen in several postmortem studies of brains of Alzheimer's patients, I'm leaning toward damage to immune systems as a cause rather than any single pathogen. We may be dealing with a total pathogen load rather than the classic kind of infectious disease. The problem this raises is that we don't have good ways to measure effectiveness of immune response or general pathogen load prior to some kind of explicit failure.

 

[Hip]

There is a thread on this subject here: Researchers Identify Virus and Two Types of Bacteria as Major Causes of Alzheimer’s

 

[Snowdrop]

Ah yes, and I even read it recently too--and didn't connect (obviously) to reading the article.
There is a longer discussion on the thread Hip posted a link to.