by cmsellers » Mon Jan 28, 2019 5:03 pm
I thought the cause and cure for everything was beer?
But, on a serious note, something several of the books that I've read recently mention is that Alzheimer's is one of the cluster of diseases associated with insulin resistance, a cluster which also includes heart disease, diabetes, gout, and several types of cancer. Alzheimer's is particularly associated with insulin resistance, to the point that some experts call it "Type III diabetes."
With the relevant cancers, the theory is that cancer can make use of blood glucose better than your regular cells can, and so if this bacteria is causal in Alzheimer's that would me my guess as well. However my better guess is that this bacteria is not causal, and both these gingivitis-causing bacteria and Alzheimer's are caused by excessive sugar consumption.
Learning that this was sponsored by an organization dedicated to proving exactly this is a bit upsetting, particularly given the evidence presented in that article. It reminds me of how aggressively Ancel Keys pushed the Diet-Heart Hypothesis against evidence to the contrary. And the note about how giving mice predisposed to Alzheimer's these bacteria worsens their symptoms reminds me of how salt is still anathema in health circles because it worsens the health symptoms of some insulin-resistant people, ignoring the underlying causes of IR.
The evidence presented in this article does not suggest to me that these bacteria cause the onset Alzheimer's, but if they can make the symptoms worse, I am worried that as with other metabolic diseases like diabetes and heart disease, we may see this become a popular treatment, even if at best it only marginally delays the inevitable. Worse still, it would depend on antibiotic use, which could make other things worse. This is especially a problem if studies ignore other symptoms and especially if they total mortality; if they only look at severity of Alzheimer's symptoms.
It's still possible that these bacteria are causal in Alzheimer's but I sincerely hope this research doesn't send doctors down an ineffective and even counter-productive path for decades. And yet, I don't have much faith that it won't especially with a think tank pushing it.