Comment by cookiengineer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cookiengineer | Hacker News Reader

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...because Alzheimer is a dormant side effect of a virus, not of a messenger chemical. But that doesn't go well in studies and "self populism" of what funded research wanted to hear.

If you study effects and not causes due to lack of measurements for reproducibility in any field of research, that's what comes out.

Also check out how the new and promising correlation started by observing the Wales eligibility for mandatory shingles vaccination during an outbreak and the effect on that test group when it comes to alzheimer or dementia in their old age.

Note that shingles (herpes zoster) virus is a dormant virus for decades, and it's not really treated because of that.

Also note that this was only discovered because people died and their data set was publicized because of that, which I hope that can happen in an anonymous way due to it being invaluable for medical research.

[1] https://www.alzheimer-europe.org/news/analysis-electronic-he...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11485228/

[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742...

[4] https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/shingles-vaccine...

Gee, that sure is a confident statement of fact.

Or maybe virus activity is one way that a negative feedback loop involving protein aggregates can begin...

“Complications due to unaddressed microbial infection” will read as pretty confident, too,

but it’s still pretty vague once you’ve really dug in.

That's why I was emphasizing "one way" and "can begin".

Clearly viral infection may be a distal factor but it is not the proximate cause of Alzheimer's... which is quite conclusively due to protein aggregates.

I don’t find any of it conclusive.

Protein aggregates seem like the effect, with many causes.

Yes, exactly. Whether it APOE mutation, traumatic injury, metabolic dysfunction, Herpes infection, or some other inflammation that upregulates kinases, you end up with hyperphosphorylated tau which in turn forms the neurofibrillary tangles that destroy nutrient transport in neurons and eventually kills them.

"Neuron death by protein aggregates" is the best way to define Alzheimer's. Anything more specific refers to only one of those aforementioned causes; anything less is just "brain don't work no more."

These clickbait headlines are so frustrating, especially since the article itself explains the tau mechanism and all the progress that has been made in understanding the disease.

Sure is a line of inquiry worth pursuing either way, no?

It very much has been. Which is why it's tiring to see these articles (and HN comments) portraying it otherwise. Search HN for Alzheimer's and you will find lots of updates on the research and lots of the same uninformed comment threads.

Not always. Genetic causes are known.

... which kind of points to the indicator that "Alzheimer != Alzheimer", implying that too many diseases with the same side effects are categorized together?

A lot of virological and parasitical components have historically been wrongly associated with genetic markers, too. Toxoplasmosis parasite comes to mind.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii

Non-sequitur

> Non-sequitur

Not sure what you are trying to achieve with comments like this, besides intentional gas lighting.

Could've commented with links to scientific articles or papers that disprove my theory.

Instead you chose to be ... this?

https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2025/09/rethinking-al...

You do realize that they are referring to the same study and dataset, which showed that shingles is correlated to APOE4, right?

Not sure if you are trolling at this point.

I am not a researcher in this field. I have read a lot about APOE4, and nearly everything I have seen about APOE4 makes it out to be the clearest of all predictors for Alzheimer's. I get that you're upset that I posted like I did, but I am not trolling. The point was that genetic causes are not an exceptional predictor for Alzheimer's. I had a hard time seeing how the best established predictor for Alzheimer's validates there being too many things labeled as Alzheimer's. If I had posted with a focus on some edge case, then it probably would have made more sense to me, but as I read it, it really seemed like a stretch.

Dropping this thread now. I am fine with being wrong, but my brief posting was not trolling.

Non-diagnostician

Point stands.

So does the lack of a model for Alzheimer’s,

and other chronic illnesses,

that the consumer-facing medical industry prefers to dismiss.

The tau hypothesis is looking like a good model.

I didn't argue a model beyond one cause.

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