Scanning ultrasound removes amyloid-β, restores memory in Alzheimer mouse model (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Scanning ultrasound removes amyloid-β, restores memory in Alzheimer mouse model (2015)

science.org

94 pointswalterbell41 comments

This needs (2015). Surely if ultrasound was effective in replicated studies we’d have a treatment by now, right? Or have heard more about it?

It takes a long time to go from the lab to commercialized use.

This assumes anyone attempted to replicate it or otherwise pursue it. I guess the question would be where are the studies that failed to replicate it.

I have friends that work in the medical tech field. A device they started developing around 2009 is barely getting into the field now after animal trials and clinical trials around the globe. It's an extremely long process requiring a lot of capital. And you likely haven't heard of it either (it is pretty effective for treating some heart related issues).

There are plenty of animal studies that show some promise that are simply abandoned for various reasons.

All that said, I thought the hypothesis that those amyloids are the cause of Alzheimers hasn't really worked out, there were other drugs that targetted those and apparently didn't work that well.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13195-021-00809-4 (2021) is the second hit on google scholar. Sounds a bit more involved than just ultrasound.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13195-022-00981-1 sounds mildly promising in one way, and disappointing viewed another way...

60 minutes did a segment for this type of treatment at WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience in West Virginia. It's intriguing.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/neurosurgeon-works-to-slow-alzh...

I watched that last year. It's very interesting research and seems effective not just for Alzheimers but for treatment of addiction as well. I'm seriously counting on this treatment for any family members who may end up being diagnosed with it later in life.

youtube thereof https://youtu.be/7BGtVJ3lBdE

Given that there doesn’t appear to be any harms from this treatment, why is it moral (or legal) to prevent humans from experimentally seeking it, standard “in mice” argument notwithstanding?

Ultrasound selfies at home, clinical trial reports self administered ultrasound scans on par with professional ones.

https://www.nibib.nih.gov/news-events/newsroom/ultrasound-se...

I don’t disagree but an issue could be that there’s plenty of people out there who would happily make up therapies that sound like they could work and take people’s money for unsound treatments.

The framework for clinical trials it to go from “there doesn’t appear to be any harm” to “we have reasonable proof that no harm is expected”.

If this is as promising as it sounds it’ll surely process through the stages as it should and eventually reach human trials.

Eventually plus 10 years, as this article is 10 years old.

Business opportunity: add a 2 MHz ultrasound enmitter to standard headphones.

I'll deep-fry and eat a brick and wash it down with motor oil if Apple ended up curing Alzheimer's

This paper was submitted march 2015, have there been subsequent studies in the last decade?

Why would ultrasound removal of amyloid-B be effective while other chemical/medical treatments offering the same would not?

> Transgenic mice with increased amyloid-β (Aβ) production

Looks to me they increased amyloid-B then removed the increase, which solved symptoms. I don't know much about this but my understanding was that Alzheimer disease had to have a bit more going on than just amyloid-B accumulation.

Yes that is the major potential problem with this type of mouse model in general. Mice are modified to have a condition that resembles something like alzheimer's disease and then treatments are tested, but there's no guarantee that the underlying disease is actually the same, so if the condition that is induced in the mice is just a symptom rather than the underlying cause of the human disease, or just superficially resembles it, the treatment may not actually be effective in humans.

My understanding is, it's definitely true that the amyloid protein is toxic to brain tissue. It's just that targeting that tissue has not, to date, lead to a breakthrough.

I suppose in principle it could be because we don't ha e good ways to remove them, and this is it.

Percussive maintenance is sometimes the most effective option.

> Anti-amyloids are expensive, and insurance won’t always cover them

https://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/anti-amyloid-therapies-alzh...

> the key reason donanemab isn’t available through the NHS is its cost. The treatment is estimated to cost around £25,000 a year per patient

https://theconversation.com/alzheimers-drug-approved-in-the-...

Insurance doesn’t cover them precisely because they don’t work.

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/does-it-work-does-...

Beat me to it. Relevant Derek Lowe quote from a different article.

  But as I did when I wrote about the lecanemab data, let’s get some of the disclaimers out of the way at the beginning. I mentioned there that no Alzheimer’s drug candidate has ever stopped the progression of disease, and that of course means that no such candidate has ever reversed any of the damage, either. See below for more on that as it relates to donanemab, but what we’re looking for in all these cases is essentially slowing down the rate at which these patients deteriorate.
  …
  But here goes: lecanemab slowed decline by 27% on the CDR-SB scale, and donanemab slowed it by 29%. As you will can see from my earlier writeup on the former drug, opinion was very much divided on whether the lecanemab numbers would even be noticeable in real-world use (there is no standard for clinically meaningful efficacy in CDR-SB changes). So I would have to think that the same objections apply here. We cannot be sure that this drug will actually make a difference in the real-world care of patients with Alzheimer’s - not yet, anyway. This point is completely avoided in the Lilly press release, but it is nonetheless real and we will be hearing more about it from clinicians - well, if you listen closely above all the noise, that is.

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/lilly-s-new-donane...

1Mhz ultrasonic _physical_ therapy devices are under $100, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3810427/ (2012)

> Applications of ultrasound in medicine for therapeutic purposes have been an accepted and beneficial use of ultrasonic biological effects for many years. Low power ultrasound of about 1 MHz frequency has been widely applied since the 1950s for physical therapy.. In this overview, the Bioeffects Committee outlines the wide range of therapeutic ultrasound methods, which are in clinical use or under study, and provides general guidance for assuring therapeutic ultrasound safety.

For ultrasound, are only certain frequencys possible or are they just not manufactured?

I know basically nothing except ultrasound being used for the ultrasonic cleaning devices I see some youtubers using.

Any indication of what frequencies are at play here? A regular ultrasound baby monitor is set at either 3Mhz or 2Mhz scan frequency and those have already been shown to induce stimulating effect when used on the head/brain afaicr.

Doesn’t this raise more questions though? If ultrasound impacts chemicals in the body, what about other forms of waves? Do we still have to find out how the body reacts to different frequencies and wavelengths?

The impact of ultrasound on dissolving and breaking things in liquid is well studied in general engineering. I don't understand your open ended question about this raising questions. How so? We don't use microwaves for dissolving or breaking crystals anyway like we already do for ultrasound.

Ah I did not know it’s already understood, so assumed we are finding it out for the first time. The above comment was a mistake then, it’s how misinformation and scaremongering starts

Things are so good medically for mice.

If we haven't seen positive results in humans I'm gonna guess it being a lot harder to push ultrasound through a human skull than a mouse skull is part of the reason.

There's the possibility of damaging side-effects in humans using energy levels high enough to replicate the mouse model.

My immediate question here is do other frequencies work? I'd quite enjoy learning that, for instance, listening to drum and bass loudly with headphones can restore memory in Alzheimer's. A touch unserious, but medically approved musical diets would be magnificent.

Music can supposedu improve Alzheimers symptoms, there was a lot of social media noise about it a few years ago.(And commentary on how elderly sit isolated in silence most of their time)

34.88 and 42.55 THz (Mid-wavelength IR)

Potential terahertz therapeutic strategy for the prevention or mitigation of Alzheimer’s disease pathology

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-023-01289-x

Community, exercise, species-appropriate diet, and psychological richness also reduce the risk of Alzheimer's and a variety of neurological disorders.

you can buy a veterinary ultrasound machine on ebay for under $3k, btw.

if anyone tries this let me know how it goes

You know the brain is about the consistency of jelly, right? If you were to induce cavitation, that could cause quite a bit of brain damage in nothing flat.

First person experimentation is a distinctly bad idea. The other is also a bad idea.

>You know the brain is about the consistency of jelly, right? If you were to induce cavitation, that could cause quite a bit of brain damage in nothing flat.

They use them on pregnant women's fetuses, so I imagine using one on an adult skull wouldn't be that big of a deal.

Yes, people trained in their use on approved and maintained equipment do that.

I'm worried about people who just pick up any old ultrasound transducer and think more power is better. What if it was intended for Lithotripsy or industrial use? Everything could end in an instant.

I do ultrasound on infant brains(and other tissues) regularly with a human rated ultrasound scanning probe. It is deemed completely safe.

The properties of a veterinary scanning probe will be similar(almost certainly identical, mammalian tissue is mammalian tissue). But you can also get human rated probes for $2k so no point in getting a vet one for $3k

Cavitation applications in ultrasound uses a different range of frequencies and designs, the scanning probes are 1-25mhz

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