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Comment by josephagoss | Hacker News Reader

Does this mean that inflammation of the brain is to be ruled out as a cause?

Inflammation is often an immune system response to a foreign agent, and I read somewhere that prions could also be triggered and formed for the same reason so there might actually be a link. I imagine chronic inflammation over a long period of time could do a lot of damage.

cheesymuffin's comment is downvoted, but I think he's on to something. It would be very odd to consider inflammation of the brain to be a cause of any problem, because inflammation is a symptom of something else.

Yeah I agree, however I'd imagine if inflammation was the cause of issues (and I recall some studies showing brain inflammation to be linked to some brain disorders) then perhaps more research would go into what causes the inflammation.

Some evidence the inflammation might be diet related too. Although I can't recall the source at the moment.

Being a symptom doesn't absolve it of being a cause too. If a thousand things can cause inflammation, but then there's a package of symptoms caused by inflammation itself, then it could be worth it to directly fight the inflammation in a lot of cases.

Inflammation often is directly causative, for example atherosclerosis where the inflammatory response directly results in the buildup of plaques. Inflammation is not typically the root cause, however; something else instigates the inflammation.

The distinction matters because the best treatment (greatest efficacy, most cost efficient) may target one or more of the links in the causative chain, but not necessarily the root cause.

Fair enough. Treatment can attack any link in the chain.

Prevention can't, and to me Alzheimer's is something that should be prevented. But we work with what we have.

What is inflammation?

The immune system kicking into gear.

- vasodilation

- production of cytokines and chemokines

- cell recruitment

- cell proliferation

- upregulation of certain genes

You're kicking your immune system into gear in some shape or form.

Keep in mind the immune system is one of the most complex signalling systems in the body. You can trigger it in different ways and get different responses.

No..

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