Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by stephengillie | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

stephengillie

There are many theories about the cause of Alzheimer's.

Previously on HN:

- Alzheimer's is caused by dirty air. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230932

- Alzheimer's is caused by lack of sleep. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18228627

- Alzheimer's is a form of diabetes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4578267

- Alzheimer's is caused by herpes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18265115

Also, brain damage is a result of Alzheimer's, not a cause.

View on HN

I wouldn't be surprised if eventually we'll figure that what we call "Alzheimer's" is in fact a whole bunch of different diseases that all cause plaque buildup in the brain.

Same with atopic dermatitis. Everytime I talk to someone and they notice the red patches on my skin and I say it's atopic dermatitis, they immediately start rambling about how the friend of their cousin's barber totally got that fixed up with that magical treatment and I have to try it. At which point I tell them that atopic dermatitis is mostly a symptom, not a single disease.

Holy shit, I thought you were joking but most of those were in the last 2 weeks.

Right? And if you extrapolate research like the sleep deprivation research further out, it ties in pretty well with the thinking that sleep deprivation keeps the brain from clearing the byproducts of a fight against herpes reactivation.

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17945738)

Herpes is a normal virus, for the most part. The key mutation that makes it so annoying is its time-release capsules to reinfect cells every so often. So which "byproducts" are cleaned out?

Assuming the working theory from one of my previous citations on beta amyloid is correct, it's the beta amyloid produced to entangle the herpes virus in the brain that's cleaned out nightly by sleep.

Edit:

Less sleep -> more beta amyloid link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16026655

Beta amyloyd -> herpes entanglement: https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(18)30526-9

None of this is definitive, mind you, but as each new bit of research comes out, a new piece of the puzzle appears to be put in place. Ultimately the question ends up being answered by a more comprehensive wide-scale experimental study tracking herpes mitigations of any sort and any possible reduction in alzheimer's occurrences, basically a larger version of this: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322463.php

Do you have any information about beta amyloid that doesn't involve Alzheimer's? I wanted to learn about the enzyme itself. Filtering "-Alzheimer's" on Google provides no articles, merely fact sheets and ordering forms.

Honestly, the only thing I'd ever seen addressing the protein in a manner tangential to Alz was the herpes entanglement research (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26836158).

Wikipedia might have good references as a starting point though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyloid_beta

Wikipedia: The normal function of Aβ is not well understood.[7]

Most of the page is dedicated to the Alzheimer's connection. Even that quote came from Alzheimer's research.

[7]Hiltunen M, van Groen T, Jolkkonen J (2009). "Functional roles of amyloid-beta protein precursor and amyloid-beta peptides: evidence from experimental studies". Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. 18 (2): 401–12. doi:10.3233/JAD-2009-1154. PMID 19584429.

Yeah, that seems to be the older understanding. We've now got two studies pointing to the role of beta amyloid as being substantially tied to tangling either herpes virus particles specifically or potentially pathogens in the brain more generally.

Linked previously but I'll link again:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26836158 dated 22 Feb 2016

https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(18)30526-9 dated 11 Jul 2018

These seem to reference Alzheimer's only in passing or potentially in relation to the infectious theory, but they specifically speak to the action of Beta Amyloid.

These do make beta ameloid sound like a virus-net, sticking to any and all virii inside the brain. And since herpes has that time-release capsule to keep reinfecting a host user, that person's brain could have more beta ameloid plaque to clean. The efficacy of brain cleaning goes back to numerous factors, including age, hours of sleep, air quality, diabetes and other diseases, etc.

In short, it's based on number of virus infections, which herpes greatly increases. So I agree that your hypothesis is sound.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com