
Diabetes drug 'significantly reverses memory loss' in mice with Alzheimer's - dsego
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006899317304596?via%3Dihub
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danieltillett
This would be great news if we have not cured mice many times before of
Alzheimer's. Unfortunatly all the drugs that have worked in mice failed when
tested in humans.

It appears that the mouse model is a very poor model for the human form of the
disease. I would go so far as to say it is worse than useless and actively
leads us astray.

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adrianN
I wonder if we had similar success with curing Alzheimer (or cancer for that
matter) in humans if experimenting on humans were possible.

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psergeant
Experimenting on humans is possible; that’s what clinical trials are for

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adrianN
But you can't try a couple of drugs and then dissect the humans to see how the
plaque in their brain looks like. Genetically engineering humans to develop
Alzheimer more quickly is also generally frowned upon.

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slowmovintarget
I recall reading an article saying that doctors were nearly ready to begin
calling Alzheimer's disease Type III diabetes. This result would lend credence
to that notion.

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eclipxe
I predict that in 5-10 years the evidence will be overwhelming that
sugar/carbohydrates for some subset of the population are essentially poison.
Cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s - I think we will start to see more and
more mainstream connections of all three with carbohydrate intake.

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beebmam
Unless you're talking about an extremely small subset of the population, like
5% or less, I think that would be a pretty bad prediction. Whole fruits,
vegetables, legumes, leafy greens are all recommended by virtually all doctors
and official dietary guidelines. And each of those are all high in
carbohydrates.

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dragonwriter
Leafy greens have a high percentage of their calories in carbohydrates, but
they are not high in carbohydrates (they are recommended because they have a
high ratio of valuable vitamins, etc., to calories, and recommended for weight
loss because they have very low calorie density. They are typically
recommended even on specifically low-carb diets.)

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dawhizkid
Also important to note the different between carbs and net carbs. Leafy greens
are high in fiber, which is a carb, but you need to subtract that value from
the total carbs per serving to get to a net carb count (i.e. total carbs your
body can actually turn into energy)

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justanotherjoe
stupid question, but how do they got the mice with alzheimer's?

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Someone
You buy mice that are likely to develop it, for example at
[https://www.jax.org/mouse-search](https://www.jax.org/mouse-search) (I notice
they offer a service to use CRISPR to design a mouse strain for you, too)

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H2SiF6
Alzheimer's is from the environment

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prepend
There are also quite a few genes that are tied to increased odds of
Alzheimer’s.

