
Alzheimer's: 'Promising' blood test for early stage of disease - elorant
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53567486
======
pubby
Both of my grandparents were diagnosed with Alzheimers a few weeks ago. The
disease had brewed inside them for several years, but nobody in my family knew
they had it until it became severe.

Unfortunately, neither of my grandparents understand how dysfunctional their
brain is. They still have the mindset that they are spry 70-year-olds, when in
reality they are in their mid 80s and incapable of caring for themselves. We'd
like to move them into a nursing home, but they reject the idea because they
don't think anything is wrong with them.

I'd like to imagine this wouldn't be an issue had we detected the disease
early enough. Early detection might not prolong life, but it certainly makes
the transition to death easier for those involved.

~~~
entangledqubit
I watched my father fade away from Alzheimers over the course of 5 years
before he passed. Based on anecdotal stories in a support group, we were very
lucky that he realized early on that something was wrong and he was very
cooperative throughout. Other families in the support group experienced
everything from lighthearted denial to emotions running amok.

Personally, I want some solid tests so I can have reliable information to make
sure I end my days as myself.

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FuckButtons
My mum was diagnosed with it last week. My gran had it too. Its by far the
worst disease I’ve encountered, it takes away everything that makes a person
who they are and leaves them with nothing. The sooner we understand what’s
causing it and the fewer people have to deal with it’s horrendous consequences
the better.

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coldpie
I have an idea that's been floating around in my head for a while, and I don't
know how I feel about it. So I'll float it here with a note that I am not
strenuously advocating for the position I'm about to express, and instead wish
to have it discussed.

I have the feeling that our modern medical obsession with keeping the body
alive for so long is leading to negative outcomes. The rate of Alzheimer's
diagnoses increases dramatically after about age 70[1]. In the US, we began to
see the _average_ life expectancy increase past 70 in the 1950s, and is now
approaching 80[2]. As a result, I think the current crop of people who are
alive are among the first to see the effects of truly advanced age. Prior to
the 1950s, longer life was always seen as a good thing: you had more time to
enjoy relative good health. Since few people lived into their 70s and beyond,
we didn't see the "bad things" coming. Now that people are living into their
70s and beyond, we start to see the horrible effects of advanced age. So the
question, which again I don't put forward with much conviction: is continuing
to put forward the preservation of life worth it given the extreme decline in
quality of life that we see past the age of 70? The gut answer is "obviously
yes," but I think we are the first people to have to truly grapple with this
question, as we watch our elders mentally fall to pieces while their bodies
chug along. Is that gut answer just the result of centuries of trying to get
past year 70? Now that we're past it, should we re-evaluate? I have a very
close relative in his late 60s going through Alzheimer's right now. Would it
truly be worse if he had passed away a couple years ago?

I don't know.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alzheimer's#Epidemiology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alzheimer's#Epidemiology)

[2] [https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
states/life...](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life-
expectancy)

~~~
ux
The key word here is "good health". If you start shifting from "living as long
as possible" to "living with the most dignity up until the end", you end up
questioning euthanasia, but also how people live post work-life: typically,
how people are going to live decently through their last stage post 60s, can
they enter a stage where they are relieved from the stress, pain, etc. You
can't just say "well let them die earlier" if you don't provide some form of
hope of relief for their last years.

Today I'd argue that the growing lifespan is used as an argument to make
people work longer, which means in worse physical conditions. The "Work until
your death" motto (the curse of people living in poverty) is not great for a
healthy and attractive society. Questioning it ends up in a heated
political/societal/philosophical discussion pretty quickly. And we're
definitely not heading in the healthy direction: not because we don't want to
shift the medical institution, but because we need a more profound society
change. From a purely economical PoV, it's great that people die before around
the beginning retirement, from a societal PoV it's a disaster.

~~~
adrianN
People are asked to work longer because pension systems were set up when
people used to die less than ten years after retirement and now a lot fewer
young people have to pay for retirees living 15+ years. The only way to avoid
this is to drastically reform pension systems.

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hprotagonist
The meta-problem is that early identification only matters if we have an
effective therapy which can seriously slow or halt disease progression.

we do not.

~~~
FL33TW00D
I work in this field and whilst it's true that there is no direct medications
that can seriously slow or halt the progression, there are effective avenues
for slowing it via diet, exercise, reduction of stress factors:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5546647/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5546647/)

Early identification absolutely matters, the question is HOW early. 5 years
doesn't do much, 15 years? You can change your entire lifestyle and the
changes can take effect with that much time.

~~~
nikkwong
I believe that my mother may be suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's
disease. It seems to have plagued all of the women in her ancestral family
lineage, and she is therefore well aware that she will likely inherit it.
Because of this she has tried to be as healthy as possible her entire life in
terms of diet and exercise; albeit, she's now at the age where these issues
may start to surface. Is there any benefit for someone like her to get tested?

------
melling
I watched The Bit Player last week.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bit_Player](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bit_Player)

Claude Shannon had Alzheimer’s. Nothing protects us from the disease. We
should be doing a lot more research into this disease.

~~~
jcranmer
> We should be doing a lot more research into this disease.

Trying to actually pin down hard numbers is difficult (searches invariably
lead you to the cost of Alzheimer's disease rather than the cost of
Alzheimer's research), but it looks like we're already at several billion
dollars a year on Alzheimer's research. If it hasn't cost more than the Apollo
project already, it likely will by the end of this decade.

~~~
melling
The healthcare costs for Alzheimer’s will be in the trillions, if we don’t
cure it.

------
m463
A friend of mine has a parent with Alzheimers, and he swears the symptoms have
improved via tumeric supplements.

He said apparently the prevalence of alzheimers is less in india, where
tumeric is found in much of the food.

(andecdotal evidence, but interesting)

~~~
vidarh
Life expectancy in India is about 10 years shorter than e.g. the US and other
developed countries. As such you'd expect to see far less Alzheimers for the
simple reason that most people get diagnosed at an advanced age.

That's before taking into account potential differences in whether or not
people are diagnosed.

That said, turmeric (and especially curcumin) is a subject of study. But these
studies also suggest it is unlikely simply eating turmeric helps, as it's not
absorbed well by the body and the amounts needed would be exceptionally high.

~~~
scrollaway
That's a great point, but life expectancy is generally highly affected by
infant mortality. How's their median life expectancy at 40?

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0d9eooo
Maybe I read the original research article incorrectly, or maybe this BBC
piece is discussing something additional, but my impression after reading
about it more closely was that this test is actually discriminating
Alzheimer's from other forms of dementia, not Alzheimer's vs no dementia.

I haven't thought this through yet but it seems interesting and important but
also not quite how it's being portrayed in the media, and not quite as
significant in some ways.

------
MikeCapone
96% accuracy may be a problem...

Depends how many false positives and false negatives, but if there's 4% of
false negatives and there's, say, 1% of the tested population that has the
disease, then even a positive test may mean you have only 20% chances of being
actually positive.

(someone double check my math, but the general idea stands, I think)

~~~
corin_
The actual data is more complicated than "96% accurate", but I'm not the best
person to deep dive on the numbers and give a better analysis.

However from reading the abstract of the actual study, it seems the TLDR is
"more accurate than current ways to test, and significantly cheaper too" \-
which would be a great step regardless of if it's not quite as perfect as a
vague "high % accurate!" makes it sound.

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768841](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768841)

------
donatzsky
A previous article and discussion on the state of Alzheimers research:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225)

------
gzer0
Unfortunate that we have thrown billions upon billions and not a single viable
treatment has made it out the pipeline. Truly one of the diseases that has
escaped humans, thus far.

~~~
DenisM
Age-related mental disorders are the final frontier for the human species.

Heart problems are basically mechanical problems, we're guaranteed to fix them
in the next 100 years, if only by printing new hearts and blood vessels.
Cancer is a cluster of rogue cells, and just it's a matter of time before we
can focus poisons, blades, irradiation, and nano-bots precisely enough before
treatment becomes as routine as annual dentist visit. Similarly bacterial
infection - it's just a foreign object that needs to be killed with some
precision. Viruses are trickier but maybe not that much - killing infected
cells seem like it would do the job.

Brains are complicated though, you can't just seek and destroy something
that's wrong. It's not a given that we can fix them in the near future, and as
all other diseases recede we will end up with close to 100% of people
succumbing to brain disorders at the end of their lives.

