Odor biomarker for Alzheimer's disease | Hacker News Reader

Odor biomarker for Alzheimer's disease

medicalxpress.com

57 pointsdavidst12 comments

Reminds me of this, regarding a woman who (allegedly) can smell Parkinson's:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/301485.php

While I know of no reason to dismiss these out of hand, I'd also be more comfortable seeing them discussed in more depth. Can anyone with actual medical knowledge speak up?

There's a slightly longer press release about the Alzheimers findings at http://www.monell.org/news/news_releases/alzheimers_disease_...; searching for the co-authors' names led to what appears to be the paper: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep19495

"Volatile metabalome" sounds so much more scholarly than "pee smell"!

Fixed link: http://www.monell.org/news/news_releases/alzheimers_disease_...

Relevant HN thread about that story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10434974

It's has comments definitely worth rereading in light of this story.

On a related note, dogs can be trained to detect (smell) cancer cells from patients' breath. Looks like McCoys medical tricorder should have a nose.

Another article where the editor is not up to date. Alzheimer is already known to be reversable (curable). Dr Dale Bredesen wrote an article about how he reversed Alzheimer in 9 out of 10 patients: http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v6/n9/full/100690.html

Can you provide a secondary source with similar claims?

Yeah, bold claims.

That article smells fishy as hell. And if Alzheimer's were treatable, today, it would be a huge huge deal, not something being peddled around as a miracle cure on the basis of a 10-person "study".

They're making progress though. They've found at least one candidate drug that appears to clear up the Amyloid-beta plaques in mice.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151208/ncomms9997/full/nco...

There could be some fishiness to it. However...

One of the things I noticed right away is that the therapeutic programs prescribed to the patients patients in the study combined autophagy/ketosis (fasting 12 hours at night), low-glycemic diets, daily exercise, stress reduction, and sleep optimization.

A recent paper [1] concluded that "[...] the term 'type 3 diabetes' accurately reflects the fact that AD represents a form of diabetes that selectively involves the brain and has molecular and biochemical features that overlap with both type 1 diabetes mellitus and T2DM."

Something to think about.

[1] De la Monte SM, Wands JR. Alzheimer’s Disease Is Type 3 Diabetes–Evidence Reviewed. Journal of diabetes science and technology (Online). 2008;2(6):1101-1113. Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769828/

But are Amyloid-beta plaques a proven cause of Alzheimer's? Or is it just correlation at this point?

If you inject amyloid-beta peptide extract from an AD-infected mouse into the brain of another, it then starts growing the usual plaques[1]. And A-beta plaque deposits are basically the distinguishing characteristic of Alzheimer's. So in my book that's very strong experimental evidence that A-beta is the causal mechanism of Alzheimer's and not merely a side effect.

It seems to be basically a misfolded protein, like CJD or mad-cow.

Usual caveats - nothing in science is ever proven to 100% certainty. Remove seal before use. Ask your doctor if Alzheimer's is right for you.

[1] http://www.jneurosci.org/content/20/10/3606.full

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