New Alzheimer’s Treatment Improves Patients’ Cognitive Abilities | Hacker News Reader

New Alzheimer’s Treatment Improves Patients’ Cognitive Abilities

ua-magazine.com

At best this is poor journalism, at worst it's some kind of paid placement.

They make a claim that it's safe to use concurrently with medication, refer to company employees as "according to the experts". The say it's a clear breakthrough and safe.

Here is a proper article on the result, explaining the good and the bad, for example that there was no benefit for patients with moderate disease:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/873886

This article tickles my spidey sense. It reads like a sponsored story, or at the very least, an article written quickly and uncritically by someone who just took NeuroAD's press release and talking points at face value.

To wit, the article ends on this note: "It is clear that a new clinical solution for Alzheimer’s is needed and Neuronix’s NeuroAD treatment is not only a safe option, but a breakthrough in the treatment of AD."

Really? That's quite a bold statement to make, given that FDA review isn't complete, and we have no longitudinal outcomes to analyze.

NeuroAD - https://neuronewsinternational.com/neuronix-submits-neuroad-...

As all wise neuroscientists would say after reading meta-analysis about rTMS: don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched

This article annoys me because TMS is a general treatment, there's no mention in the article of it being particularly suitable for Alzheimers or an involved study of it's use in Alzheimers. The entire premise of TMS lacks the precision of proper medicine at this early stage. It can be reduced to (this is honestly accurate) the following- "lets put a 9 volt charge across the brain somewhere and see what happens". People are getting results but if they are repeatable and then useful is going to be an entirely different matter. There's no evidence that this treatment does anything for plaque deposits.

It's 2017 and we are talking about putting men on Mars but at the same time we know this brain plaque is killing or will kill millions of us in the future but we don't have a way to remove it! Can't we build microscopic pipe cleaners at least!? It's infuriating!

On the company's website it says: "According to a company release, the study involved 131 patients at nine medical centres in the USA and one in Israel. The study evaluated the safety and efficacy of the neuroAD Therapy System in comparison to placebo, following six weeks of treatment and six weeks of follow-up, using the cognitive and behavioural standard scales for the evaluation of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The study’s positive outcomes confirm and extend the results of former studies conducted across the world with the neuroAD Therapy System. The detailed results of the study will be presented at the International Conference on Clinical Trials for Alzheimer’s Disease (CTAD; 8–10 December, San Diego, USA)."

"might" is the operative word missing from this and every other press release that admits that clinical trials are not yet finished.

or in this case, even begun.

The trials were completed. See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13347086

It angers me that a drug yielding cognitive improvement of X in an Alzheimer's patient is progress, but the same drug yielding the an improvement of X in a healthy patient is abuse. There should be no stigma against improving ourselves.

How is it illegal/abuse when you can pay to have similar therapy already or even buy a cheap kit on the internet to hook your brain up to?

I don't think anyone is holding back progress. The minute it becomes clear there's cognitive improvement for healthy people the demand and usage will make anabolic steroid use seem tiny in comparison.

Then why is Modafinil still a controlled subtance? What about Adderall? They both greatly improve cognitive performance in healthy people, and they are widely used by healthy people, but we all do this ridiculous dance where we pretend that we're only using these drugs to treat medical conditions.

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