Alzheimer’s:haywire immune system eating brain connections?

[leela]

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016...ses-may-drive-early-stage-alzheimer-s-disease

More than 99% of clinical trials for Alzheimer’s drugs have failed, leading many to wonder whether pharmaceutical companies have gone after the wrong targets. Now, research in mice points to a potential new target: a developmental process gone awry, which causes some immune cells to feast on the connections between neurons.

 

[CCC]

From family experience, Alzheimer ain't Alzheimer (to quote an old Australian TV ad).

We think one family member malnutritioned herself there (the famous old person chocolate biscuit and coffee diet, if she ate at all), and another was quite probably a brain infection thanks to a pre-antibiotic ear infection decades and decades earlier.

The signs and symptoms were very different, the blood test results were different, the decline was totally different, and the end-stage behaviour was different. The malnutrition version improved dramatically with a paleo-style diet (energy, memory, engagement - all of those measures), but it was too little, too late.

Of course, that doesn't mean the infectious route doesn't apply to any or even all.

 

[BurnA]

More than 99% of clinical trials for Alzheimer’s drugs have failed, leading many to wonder whether pharmaceutical companies have gone after the wrong targets.

What's there to wonder about, 99% is fairly conclusive.

 

[Violeta]

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016...ses-may-drive-early-stage-alzheimer-s-disease

This is funny, because don't pharmaceutical companies most often go after the wrong target?

And I would bet with their new target they are still going after the wrong target.

However, even when they have the right target they don't seem to try to find a true "cure", just something that might reduce a symptom or two.