Alzheimer's Transmission Pathway Discovered 154
smitty777 writes "Two separate studies by the Taub Institute and Harvard have discovered the pathway used by Alzheimer's Disease to spread through the brain. The studies indicate it's not a virus, but a distorted protein called Tau which moves from cell to cell. Further, the discovery 'may now offer scientists a way to move forward and develop a way to block tau's spread in Alzheimer's patients, said Karen Duff, a researcher at Columbia's Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's disease and co-author of one study published Wednesday in the journal PLoS One. "It's enlightening for us because it now provides a whole other area for potential therapeutic impact," said Duff. "It's possible that you can identify the disease and intervene (with potential tau-blocking drugs) before the dementia actually sets in."'"
Does this mean? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does this mean? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps this is what makes soylent green so delicious? If so, then I consider it an acceptable risk.
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Re:Does this mean? (Score:5, Informative)
For some fun and tasty reading.
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Doctor: So... eaten anyone's brains lately?
Re:Does this mean? (Score:5, Interesting)
The prion protein that is at the heart of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, on the other hand, that appears to be the normal protein misfolding. The diseased proteins seem to convince normal proteins to misfold.
So, as I understand it, the hypothesis is that if you were to inject material from an alzheimer's patient's brain into your brain, for example, the alzheimer's Tau would not cause your tau to start clumping up and would not cause the disease. If you injected brain material from someone suffering from spongiform encephalitis though, the proteins in your brain WOULD be coaxed to start clumping up, causing the disease.
Let's not test those hypotheses though...
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I've never heard of anything to suggest that Alzheimers can be "caught." A seminar I saw a few years ago on tau suggested that in order to form these aggregates of tau, you need to have a mutated form of it: normal tau does not start clumping up and killing brain cells (not entirely sure I'm remembering that correctly).
Uh-oh! You better get tested for Tau proteins right away...
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Right away I also wondered if it was a prion-like issue with malformed tau proteins. Has anyone confirmed whether the structure and orientation (left vs right) of the free tau protein is identical to that of normal tau?
As far as I know tau protein is used to maintain microtubules in cells. Maybe something is damaging the microtubules and the free tau is just a result of this or the tau is malformed to start with and it results in cells dying from defective microtubules.
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No, lets test the hypothesis (Score:2)
Absolutely. Every self-respecting cannible knows (Score:2)
In other words, Alzhimers is a prion disease (Score:3, Interesting)
In other words, Alzhimer's is a prion disease, much like Kuru. Also, I suspect, much like Multiple Sclerosis.
The difference is that Kuru is a disease gotten by eating human flesh, and even tigers that eat it will be able to get it from humans.
Scrappie comes from sheep. Mad cow comes from cows. Even deer have their own prion disease. If I had to guess what MS comes from, I'd guess pig meat.
So what's Alzhimer's come from? I suspect it comes from sausage. More specifically, from rats. Anyhow, that's whe
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You have a lot of unsubstantiated suspicions.
The thing about prions is that they are not just a transmissible disease. They can spontaneously be generated by environmental factors deforming an existing protein.
They also do not say that this malformed tau protein is capable of corrupting normal protein, which would be required before it could be a transmissible prion.
At last Zombies can now be explained (Score:2)
Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
I know that identifying the underlying cause and developing a treatment are often worlds apart, but I'm glad nonetheless to see this advancement, if merely for the fact that one day others won't have to experience the pain I did as I watched people I love succumb to Alzheimer's.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
quark101 opined:
Alzheimer's is a terrible disease, not just for the person who has it, but especially so for those who are close to the afflicted. The slow, degenerative, wasting of the mind is horrifying to watch, as the person that was once bright and lively gets turned into a shell of their former self. Not able to grasp what's going on around them, or who they're talking to, the person can easily become terrified, lost, and confused, made all the more painful by the fact that they don't know who their children are or why they're here.
I know that identifying the underlying cause and developing a treatment are often worlds apart, but I'm glad nonetheless to see this advancement, if merely for the fact that one day others won't have to experience the pain I did as I watched people I love succumb to Alzheimer's.
Amen to that.
Last August, my mother was diagnosed with "mild to moderate" Alzheimer's. I had been certain for some time prior to then that she had the disease. She would sometimes repeat as if it had just occurred to her a story she'd told me just minutes earlier, she'd get stuck trying to recall the names of people she'd known for years (such as her 22-year-old granddaughter), and was only strongly confident about the details of events long past. In November, she was examined by two doctors at the Copper Ridge Institute (which is affiliated with Johns Hopkins), which specializes in Alzheimer's research and treatment. She knew the President of the U.S. was black, but couldn't recall his name, thought my youngest sister was 40 (she turned 53 in December), and couldn't remember which day of the week it was (it was Friday).
I call her at least once a week, and she seems to deteriorate more every time I speak with her - and yet, she's still fundamentally the same warm, sweet, vibrant woman she's been as long as I've known her. Just ... a little confused. What I fear is that, over time, she will lose all the memories that make her that person. I've known several people with advanced Alzheimer's, and watched them become progressively emptier shells of themselves, until they're little more than slack-jawed zombies, incapable of caring for themselves, or communicating with others - and I don't want to see that happen to my Mom.
But I know it will, because none of these new discoveries will make it out of the lab in time to save her from the ravages of this loathsome disease. And that breaks my heart.
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Same thing happened to my gran.
It's like being forced to watch an extremely bad car crash in slow motion - so slow it takes place over the course of years rather than seconds. You know what's happening from quite early on in the process, you've got a pretty good idea of how it's going to pan out in the end, you can tell from the pace at which things progress that the end may be some time away and you're powerless to stop it.
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In those last years, she was pretty much a zombie, or a human shell, hadn't made a coherent sentence in years, and finally stopped even trying to speak a single word.. she seemed to sleep a lot, but I don't know everything that happened when I wasn't visiting. She so didn't deserve
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Dr. Joe commiserated:
Thomst: I feel for you. My mother developed Alzheimer's some years ago and died from it. If you have not read The 36 Hour Day, you may want to get it. Understanding your mother's humanity and growing lack of control over her own life are the most important things you can use to help her. I was very lucky in being of a mind not to try to change my mother's behavior, and instead to help her experience as complete a life as she could.
I'm sorry for your loss.
I'm not familiar with The 36 Hour Day, but I'm acutely conscious of my Mom's state of mind, and the fear and depression I know she's experiencing as her disease progresses. I try to be as supportive as possible, without becoming maudlin, whenever I speak to her. Lately, I've been urging her to record her memoirs as a legacy for her yet-unborn grandchildren. (It's something she's talked about doing for years, so it's really her idea, not mine.) I just want her to
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It is a truly evil disease. I think my mom was going down that path so when she died almost instantly from a massive stroke I saw it as a bit of a blessing for everyone. Beats watching her soul slowly get scooped out of her (and probably hellish for them too).
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Yep. When my grandmother died, after a long bout with Alzheimer's, my reaction was, "That's not her. That's a thing that *used to be* her."
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't have anything insightful to add, but I feel compelled to say fuck you, cancer and double fuck you, Alzheimer's. Thank you for your attention.
Heh...yeah. Every single person in my family for the past 3 generations, with only two exceptions, both maternal and paternal has died in their early 70's or before from cancer. The exceptions: one of my cousins committed suicide, and one of my grandfathers survived into his 80's only to succumb to Alzheimer's. I got to watch a truly brilliant man, who I've always considered far more intelligent than I, become unable to understand the most simple concepts, followed by slowly becoming more and more unres
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I don't mean to pry, but why on Earth would your mother refuse chemo? These days most cancers (not all, by any means, but most) are extremely treatable and survivable if caught early. It's unpleasant for a few months, but with a few exception you'll mostly always survive and be fine. It's not like it was 30 years ago where you were looking at 50-50 odds at best and the treatment was worse than the disease. I personally know literally half a dozen cancer survivors just among my family and people that I a
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It's not as simple as that.
It's much easier to successfully treat cancer in its early stages. Which is great if you're "lucky" enough to be struck down with a type that tends to be easily detectable at early stages. Testicular and breast cancer fall into this category - it's pretty damn obvious if you've got a lump on one of your testicles.
Cancers that start deep inside the body - things like lung, liver, pancreas cancer - often don't show much in the way of symptoms until you're at a pretty advanced stage.
World Cancer Day Feb 4 (Score:2)
You're right about the stages, also the type of cancer. I know at the local relay for life events I'll hear 'Oh my cancer's been in remission for years' and then the next person will tell you how a family member was gone in months. I also hear a lot of stories at the chemo ward. My mother's been fighting ovarian for over 3 years, but it had recently spread to her liver. Actually her doctors told her in December to get her affairs in order as there was nothing they could do, probably last 2-3 months. Also sh
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I suppose I should have been more specific. Certainly there are form of cancer, or stages of cancer, where accepting treatment is simply an uncomfortable way to prolong the inevitable. The implication in the GGP though is that his mother is deliberately avoiding doctors and potential diagnosis, because she intends to refuse treatment under almost any circumstances. It's one thing to rationally look at your options, realize that you have stage four small cell lung cancer, and extending your life for a few
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Good luck, anon.
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Triple fuck growing up
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p.s. you might die a bit earlier though.
Nutrition can make a difference... (Score:2)
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823 [changemakers.com]
Look into vitamin D, eating more vegetables, getting enough iodine, periodic fasting, omega 3s, and so on.
Regular exercise to keep lymph circulating and mind-body coordination (Yoga, Tai Chi) can help, too.
And social and psychological aspects make a difference too (especially in supporting good nutrition, adequate exercise, time for learning, and limiting bad stress).
The seeds of cancer are usually set decades before the problem emerges. Th
I, for one.. (Score:2, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our.. I, for one, welcome..
Tau (Score:5, Funny)
Xenoflesh in the human brain? Clearly the apothecaries have failed in purging this scum from our fellow men. The only solution is Exterminatus. The Emperor Protects!
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Great news (Score:3)
I'm certain Sir Pterry [terrypratchett.co.uk] is following this with considerable interest.
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That was my first thought too. Knowing what little I do of him, he'd probably be the first in line to volunteer for human experimental studies of this.
And not out of selfishness, but to benefit others with his experience.
I have attended a few of his readings, over the past 6 years and he had first explained he thought he'd suffered some kind of minor stroke, the following year he came through town with another reading and shed more light on his experience. Finally there was the "embuggerance" note posted publicly after the diagnosis of Early Onset Alzheimer's. He has tried many treatments and has been advocating Right To Die.
You can see how he has grown
Notice where the study was done (Score:5, Insightful)
They spend more on advertising then R&D.
Re:Notice where the study was done (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree that the pharmaceutical businesses is a complete disaster area in terms of cures-per-dollar, you can't point at one publicly funded study and use it as evidence of that fact. It's spectacularly irrational.
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While I agree that the pharmaceutical businesses is a complete disaster area in terms of cures-per-dollar, you can't point at one publicly funded study and use it as evidence of that fact. It's spectacularly irrational.
Uh, yes you can. Not on its own, but in conjunction with a larger body of studies that all demonstrate this point. It's not a smoking gun, it's just part of a larger body of evidence. But go ahead and call it "spectacularly" irrational if you want, I guess.
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If you're pointing at "a larger body of studies" you're not pointing at one study any more, are you?
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"pharmaceutical businesses is a complete disaster area in terms of cures-per-dolla"
based on... what? it's been the most successful way to produce reasonably reliable drugs ever invented by man.
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The last ten years have not been a good time for the metaphorical pipeline. I'm not sure what's goign to replace it - startups, spinoffs, and publicly funded grand challenges, probably - but business isn't cutting it.
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That should've been "business as usual".
What are these 'cures' of which you speak? (Score:2)
While I agree that the pharmaceutical businesses is a complete disaster area in terms of cures-per-dollar ...
The pharmaceutical industry is not about prevention or cure, they are all about perpetual treatment.
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You can't get approval from the FDA without showing some very specific pharmacology data. You need to show you know exactly what's going on at the lowest level or there's not a chance in bureaucracy that CBER or CDER is going to approve your new drug application. Theses days even the small molecule generics have to at least make a facsimile of the big boy's mechanism description and pay for someone on staff qualified to answer questions about it.
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A) This is a discovery, not a development of a treatment; these are different things.
B) So what? there marketing spends money; that i no way makes drug research cheap.
Re:Notice where the study was done (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, I have to point out that basic biological research is a different beast from true medical research. Clinical trials in people are generally very expensive compared to basic research. They take much longer too. Mass producing drugs is not cheap to begin with, and the standards have to be very high for pharmecuticals. 70% purity of a drug you're going to inject into rats to test the effect for basic research like this is acceptable often, but that's hideously impure for something you're going to be putting into people.
The biggest disadvantage pharmecuticals have is liability. No one sues you if one of your lab rats or plates of cells die, this is not the case if someone taking your medicine dies. You need to hire an army of lawyers.
They do have huge costs, and the risks are much higher. Again, they should be scrutinized, but I don't think it's fair to imply that just because a university lab has a result on Alzheimers means that drugs should be cheap.
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They spend more on advertising then [sic] R&D.
I hate this statement as a statement against the pharmaceutical industry.
Marketing 101 is all about Return on Investment. Marketing is an investment from which you expect a return greater than the investment. Very few large companies spend more on marketing than they get back out of it. This is just as true for pharmaceuticals as it is any other industry. That is the POINT of marketing expenditure. Maybe some companies have marketing departments which suck at their job. But that's not a problem with m
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No, the problem is that the drug companies have NOT been producing 'useful' drugs. They have mostly (of course, there are a few exceptions) been producing 'me too' drugs. Yet another acid blocker for your tummy ache, yet another ACE inhibitor for your blood pressure, yet another minimally modified anti depressant for everything else.
So when you don't have biology to tout, you bang on the advertising table. Put up pretty graphs about how much better your drug is than the existing drug and hope nobody noti
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Not to mention that marketing (in pharma) drives up profitability but drops long term value [nature.com]. Actually, that link is probably a must read for anyone who makes claims based on the marketing is double R&D claim [plosmedicine.org]. (Actually, reading that link will likely tone down the quote based off of a snippet summary of a news article about this paper).
Nahdude812 makes some excellent points about marketing. Marketing pays for itself, and then it pays for other things (such as more R&D). If marketing is a net negat
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+5 Insightful to such idiocy! Slashdotters love a good platitude, I guess.
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Students do get paid. Just not very much.
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While I'd love to see some reform of the drug industry, it isn't quite as black-and-white as you make it out. First, all they discovered is a disease mechanism, not a treatment.
When somebody does come up with a proposed treatment, it will be after some modest amount of R&D money is spent (might be a lot, might be a little - chances are the study that nails it won't be expensive but all the work that didn't pan out will be). Now you have a drug candidate - a molecule that in a test tube does something
Finally, some good news... (Score:3)
Hopefully I will see a cure for this disease in my lifetime.
Known to be prion related (Score:2)
I haven't RTFA but "The studies indicate it's not a virus"??? Didn't we already know that?
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It was Daniel Gajdusek and Michael Alpers that showed that Kuru could be transmitted by brain material. Margaret Mead was not in this part of Papua New Guinea, and Kuru is not the same as CJD (although both are prion diseases with similar effects).
Re:Known to be prion related (Score:5, Informative)
We've known about tau protein's involvement in Alzheimers for decades. Specifically, we've known that the protein forms tangles which crush brain cells. That part is beyond old news. What seems to happen is that the tau protein "unzips" from its proper location, resulting in brain cells registering that there is insufficient tau protein in locations where it should be, in turn resulting in a loop that will kill everything in the area.
What is NOT known is why it unzips. My father's work in the late 80s, early 90s, showed that aluminum toxicity can cause the unzipping process. Later studies have shown that this is not the only pathway, but that there is usually something encased in the tau protein.
This has led to me speculating that this may have once been a feature, not a bug, that in early life this might have been an environmental detox mechanism (bind toxic chemicals in the area up in protein which is then ejected). This is based on the fact that the brain is unique amongst cells utilizing tau protein in that it has nowhere to eject bound-up toxins and that you don't see these kinds of tangles forming in other contexts where tau protein exists. It would also explain why Alzheimer's looks like it could be virally caused as it would end up with the same look and feel at the neurological level. On the one hand, I've read the papers, I've been involved in the research, I understand the science extremely well. On the other hand, neuroscience is a jealous discipline - even biochemists have a very tough time getting a hearing and I've far less standing than that in the biological sciences - and thus I do not expect this speculation to get looked at. (And, no, this speculation isn't Wikipedia-based. The original thoughts were written up when Gopher was the protocol of choice and really is based on hard, raw data collected in the field. I was, after all, involved in collecting it.) Nonetheless, this finding convinces me that I will prove to have been far closer to the actual mechanism than most of the recognized theories to date. (Yes I'm an old, arrogant, snobbish fart. Now fetch me a lawn so you can gerroff it!)
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Now the meaning... (Score:2)
...of the expression, "I may have Alzheimer's, but at least I don't have Alzheimer's," will change...
In America you can be cured of most diseases (Score:2)
Provided of course, only if you can afford it.
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Yeah, tell that to Steve Jobs.
Re:In America you can be cured of most diseases (Score:5, Insightful)
Cases like this are where homeopathy changes from being mostly harmless, and therefore not worthy of much attention, and become outright dangerous.
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It wasn't homeopathy in Jobs' case, it was some sort of special dietary regimen.
I've heard the argument that Jobs was unlucky enough to have a form of the cancer that probably would've have been much better with earlier treatment; that probably doesn't apply to most.
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Being intelligent doesn't stop you from being wrong. Steve Jobs' choice was indeed his own, but it was a stupid choice and a wrong choice that he himself later admitted was going to kill him. In his case, his arrogance overrode his intelligence, and he admitted as much. Having said that, his knowledge of cancers was probably extremely limited. Intelligence doesn't grant you skills or knowledge, it merely grants you the ability to attain them faster -- within certain constraints. Intelligence is often limite
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Jobs might have been well-educated and intelligent, but he was fundamentally a salesperson. A very high-powered one. They tend to be crazy. It's usually a fairly specific kind of crazy, but crazy nonetheless. Basically, their success leads them to believe that they can accomplish anything just by force of will and personality. These people are heavily into all that self-actualization motivational stuff. They also really _believe_ in it due to their own success. Confirmation bias leads them to believe that t
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Well, he wasn't cured, but he lasted a remarkably long time, and managed to get a liver transplant that was very questionable given that he was dying of pancreatic cancer. Usually they don't give organ transplants to people with such a bad prognosis. Getting the liver may have extended his life by about 2 years. It very well could have extended a different patient's life by twenty. He managed to get the liver by spending a lot of money to fly around and visit a lot of different doctors and get on a lot of d
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Naturopathy, not homeopathy... both of which are crap. Of course, the stage it was detected it's unlikely that actual treatments would have changed anything.
Where is the peer review? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm always suspicious of these 'breakthroughs' when they are introduced via mass media. Somebody thought up a possible cause always gets interpreted to mean that there must be a cure on the way and that's a sexy story to sell the papers, so... Where are the links to peer-reviewed scientific journals? This is Slashdot, a link to the NY Times isn't much more than a start.
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The links to the peer-reviewed papers are in the fucking article.
Can you read? (Score:2)
The link to the peer reviewed paper is in the NYT article.
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Indeed. They appear to have edited the article to add the hyperlink since I posted that.
Folding@Home (Score:5, Informative)
I talked with the researchers involved with Folding@Home, and they told me that indeed, processing power is at least partly used to research Tau protein misfolding.
So, if you want to do something good for your future (since there is a good chance you'll be hit by Alzheimer's if you live long enough), I suggest contributing your CPU and graphics cards cycles to Folding@Home.
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Wouldn't they get more if you turned off your computer and donated the money you'd otherwise have to spend on the electricity bill?
PLoS One Link (Score:4, Informative)
Below is a link for the PLoS One article...
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0031302;jsessionid=4EA9D1FCBCCF4E5C7B1B9A5FE3266C3E
Nice work (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, it all starts well and good... (Score:4, Funny)
but next thing you know you're in a helicopter, shooting monkeys off the Golden Gate Bridge with a machine gun.
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so.. win-win!
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Or as I call it, "Saturday".
Do you remember... (Score:2)
Does anybody remember Alzheimer's first name?
No? That's how it starts...
tau and prions are related (Score:2)
Hooray! (Score:2)
Perfect (Score:2)
Stuff like this (Score:2)
is why I don't plan on living past my 60's.
Will this make a difference? (Score:2)
The Tau protein has been known to be involved with Alzheimer's Disease for a long time. For a long time the accumlation of beta amyloid has been thought as the main driving mechanism of Alzheimer's Disease. The Tau-hypothesis has been around for a long time as well. I get the impression that the majority of the research on Alzheimer's Disease has been on beta-amyloid, including finding medication that is targeting this protein. And large sums of money has been invested in this research. I don't know if this
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Well, yes there is. The pathway from scrapie to BSE to vCJD is well-established.
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That seems a little unlikely given how distinct they are in progression and histology.
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It's always the proteins ...
Prions , Tau etc...
can we not just ban them
2112 - year of the protein
seriously though - it looks like a good start
So its Tau then. Sounds like six sigma work.