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Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by moyix on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @07:23PM (#11773973)
Some previous discussion of an earlier paper that suggested a fungal infection may be to blame:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344

Very interesting to see more suggestive evidence from another group!

Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by mouse_potato on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @08:07PM (#11774184)
I've also read some autopsy reports that showed many patients had Lyme's disease.
Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by nonbel on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @08:19PM (#11774229)
http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

It is best to assume "everything is correlated with everything else", rather than jump on every correlation. On the other hand it is important to encourage people to notice correlations and coincidences, but realize not every one can be followed up on, and most of these that are noticed will be only weakly involved in any solution.

Really all we know at this point is that Alzheimer's disease is associated with the presence of more stuff that stains with antibodies raised towards Amyloid-beta aggregates than usual. It isn't even clear whether these are a cause or a symptom, nor whether these stains are near 100% specific towards beta-Amyloid (ie as derived from Amyloid precursor protein) rather than other aggregations of beta-sheets (like any prion "infection").

Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by nonbel on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @08:32PM (#11774299)
What part of this triggered a downvote? Am I not up-to-date on the current status?
Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by eru on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @09:23PM (#11774539)
It's best to disregard early downvotes.

There was a mythical past when Hacker News was much smaller, when (early) downvotes meant something. But that's gone.

Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by zzz157 on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @09:32PM (#11774599)
Yes. 10/10 had it. Small sample size though, but, memory loss and dementia are late-stage symptoms of Lyme and associated coinfections. It makes a lot of sense. It seems like a simple study, to me, would be to take a bunch of early-stage Alzheimer's patients, give them Doxycycline/Tetracycline and observe them to see if they have a Jersch-Herxheimer reaction--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_rea...
Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by cstejerean on Thursday May 26, 2016 @02:32AM (#11776020)
http://www.j-alz.com/content/study-disproves-link-between-ly...

A study looking at the rates of Lyne disease and Alzheimer's by state did not find a correlation. States where Lyme disease was more prevalent tended to actually have lower rates of Alzheimer's.

Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by Gatsky on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @10:56PM (#11775004)
That fungal paper was very tenuous. I would have rejected it if I was the reviewer.
Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by LionessLover on Thursday May 26, 2016 @03:49AM (#11776325)
Like I reject your comment - because it contains no information whatsoever apart from a very short opinion. If your own work is so shoddy, what conclusions can I draw about your criticism of others? A few reasons or a link that states them should have gone with your criticism.
Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by isleyaardvark on Thursday May 26, 2016 @12:18PM (#11779153)
You could have just asked "How so?"
Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by LionessLover on Thursday May 26, 2016 @12:41PM (#11779365)
Or I could have written:

> Like I reject your comment - because it contains no information whatsoever apart from a very short opinion. If your own work is so shoddy, what conclusions can I draw about your criticism of others? A few reasons or a link that states them should have gone with your criticism.

But thank you for uselessly pointing out options. You know, you could have taken a walk, eaten a sandwich, did some random activity, written a comment that's actually useful, or many other things. And yet you chose to write what you did, for some inexplicable reason.

Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by isleyaardvark on Thursday May 26, 2016 @03:02PM (#11780602)
If you had just said "How so?", that would have been civil and possibly you would have learned his criticism. (It also would have followed this site's guidelines for commenting.)

I don't know why you've chosen to be antagonist to both the other commenter and myself. How are you doing in your life? Are you under a lot of stress? Honest question.

Re:Could Alzheimer’s Stem from Infections? by Gatsky on Thursday May 26, 2016 @08:14PM (#11782876)
My suggestion is to take a deep breath, then consider the net worth of your comment, then do one or all of the following:

Read paper yourself. Google it. Look at the discussion in the previous HN thread, which is referenced in this thread.