Breaking: Alzheimers disease the result of fungal infection

[Comrade Tortoise]

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep15015

Full article is Open Access

The possibility that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has a microbial aetiology has been proposed by several researchers. Here, we provide evidence that tissue from the central nervous system (CNS) of AD patients contain fungal cells and hyphae. Fungal material can be detected both intra- and extracellularly using specific antibodies against several fungi. Different brain regions including external frontal cortex, cerebellar hemisphere, entorhinal cortex/hippocampus and choroid plexus contain fungal material, which is absent in brain tissue from control individuals. Analysis of brain sections from ten additional AD patients reveals that all are infected with fungi. Fungal infection is also observed in blood vessels, which may explain the vascular pathology frequently detected in AD patients. Sequencing of fungal DNA extracted from frozen CNS samples identifies several fungal species. Collectively, our findings provide compelling evidence for the existence of fungal infection in the CNS from AD patients, but not in control individuals.

So...yeah. I mean there is not a whole lot of commentary I can officer, other than the fact that this completely overturns the commonly accepted etiology of the disease. And if it is an infection, it can actually be treated. Which is sooo damned cool.

Also: Diana Pisa, Ruth Alonso, Alberto Rábano, Izaskun Rodal & Luis Carrasco are probably going to win the Nobel.

[General Havoc]

If. If. If. Alzheimer's is one of the most widely-studied diseases in the world right now, and this is a pretty revolutionary conclusion to come to. I don't want to discount it, of course, but it's early to start canonizing everyone for discovering the holy grail of Alzheimer's

[Comrade Tortoise]

If. If. If. Alzheimer's is one of the most widely-studied diseases in the world right now, and this is a pretty revolutionary conclusion to come to. I don't want to discount it, of course, but it's early to start canonizing everyone for discovering the holy grail of Alzheimer's

Despite all that research that went into it, Alzheimers has been completely intractable. All they can do is give a cholinesterase inhibitor to try to keep acetylcholine from being cleaved, thus giving a boost to communication between neurons, and that does sweet fuck-all most of the time.

Obviously replication is required, and there is always the possibility that for whatever reason, people with Alzheimers get fungus secondary to the disease (though how that might happen...). But when it comes to medical research, a cliche holds pretty damn true. To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Neurologists and cell physiologists only see what is going on with the brain cells. They see the things that a pathogen induces in brain tissue and in the physiology of neurons, but unless they look for it, they wont actually see a pathogen (to find them, you have to either stain them in tissue samples under a microscope, or run a genetic screen. The medical geneticist will see genetic factors in a disease, but because we dont actually have a complete model of what various genes actually do, they only know statistical linkages. To the immunologist, Alzheimers looks auto-immune.

Notice what specialty is missing. Infectious disease. There are two ways to get an immune response. Allergy/Auto-immune, or actual pathogen. They did not look for fungi on a lark, there has been some evidence for it in prior studies (chitin polysaccharides in blood serum etc). And there they are. Terrifying little fungal hyphae dancing to the Nuckcracker Suite inside the neurons of human brains. A fungal infection is consistent with the entire body of prior work done on the disease as well. So while, again, replication is required and *some* means of establishing the causal pathway without going all Joseph Mengele on old people is required... there is probably a Nobel in here if it pans out.

[Josh]

Fingers and toes crossed.

I can definitely testify to tunnel vision in medical specialties, I bump up against it on the reg.