Bad Medicine

The truth about amyloid plaque and its connection to Alzheimer’s disease

Posted by

0


Image: The truth about amyloid plaque and its connection to Alzheimer’s disease

Scientists have been studying the link between amyloid plaques and Alzheimer’s disease for over 20 years, but a growing number of experts are questioning this prevailing hypothesis. Thomas J. Lewis, Ph.D. has been leading the call to change the way the medical community looks at, and treats, Alzheimer’s disease. And according to this Alzheimer’s expert, the notion that amyloid plaque is the sole cause of Alzheimer’s disease is nothing more than a myth, peddled by the profit-seeking pharma industry for their own financial gain.

Dr. Lewis is the CEO and founder of RealHealth Clinics, and has spent years researching and developing alternative treatments for the condition. Despite the fact that amyloid plaques and the “amyloid cascade” hypothesis have been the cornerstone of Alzheimer’s disease research for decades, Lewis believes that other forces are at play. Other experts have also begun to question the amyloid dogma — and for good reason.

Amyloid plaques and Alzheimer’s disease

As sources explain, the current accepted theory about Alzheimer’s goes like so: Beta amyloid, a protein fragment, accumulates in the brain and forms clumps of amyloid plaque. This plaque is believed to destroy synapses, cause nerve cell death and ultimately, impair brain function.

The theory sounds good on paper, but as Dr. Lewis explains, there are some glaring problems with this hypothesis.

And as sources report, more than 100 amyloid-targeting drugs have been tested in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease; all have failed. Researchers have even tried using these drugs in milder cases of dementia, still to no avail. Now, rather than admit their prevailing theory is wrong, Big Pharma is looking to employ totally healthy people as their guinea pigs. If amyloid plaques were the problem, the drugs should have offered at least some benefit. Further, giving healthy people drugs to prevent a disease they don’t have, ultimately, won’t even provide substantiating proof of concept, anyways — not that a lack of convincing evidence has ever stopped Big Pharma before.

100% organic essential oil sets now available for your home and personal care, including Rosemary, Oregano, Eucalyptus, Tea Tree, Clary Sage and more, all 100% organic and laboratory tested for safety. A multitude of uses, from stress reduction to topical first aid. See the complete listing here, and help support this news site.

More, Dr. Lewis explained at a recent summit, there are many cases of Alzheimer’s disease in which no amyloid plaques are present. This alone is a bit of a red flag; after all, if the plaques are the only thing that causes Alzheimer’s, they should be present in all patients.

This finding, at the very least, suggests that there is more than one cause of Alzheimer’s.

Even more interesting is the finding that amyloid plaque is often present in the brains of individuals not affected by Alzheimer’s disease.

As Dr. Lewis notes further, research by Harvard University has shown that beta amyloid is actually part of the immune system response. This, he posits, could mean that amyloid plaques may actually play a protective role in the brain. Instead of causing Alzheimer’s, the accumulation of beta amyloid may be a sign that something else is going awry.

So, the drugs designed to target the “cause” of Alzheimer’s do nothing to actually help treat the disease, and studies have indicated that amyloid plaque, at the very least, is not the only factor that contributes to it, either. It is no wonder that experts like Dr. Lewis propose that perhaps another factor is at play.

Indeed, it would seem that like other conditions, Alzheimer’s disease can be triggered by an array of causes. Dr. Lewis notes, however, that inflammation is virtually always present. He posits that  environmental toxins, stress, poor nutrition, lack of sleep and bacterial and viral infections can all play a role in the onset of the disease.

Research has shown that prescription drugs and vaccines can also contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s. All things considered, it’s clear that the way mainstream medicine currently looks at Alzheimer’s disease is misguided. You can learn more at Dementia.news.

Sources for this article include:

NaturalHealth365.com

Alzheimers.net

Pressure To Publish Leads To Shoddy Science And Bad Medicine.

Posted by

0


Competition for scarce funding and tenure may be prompting some scientists to cut corners.

A surprising medical finding caught the eye of NPR’s veteran science correspondent Richard Harris in 2014. A scientist from the drug company Amgen had reviewed the results of 53 studies that were originally thought to be highly promising — findings likely to lead to important new drugs. But when the Amgen scientist tried to replicate those promising results, in most cases he couldn’t.

“He tried to reproduce them all,” Harris tells Morning Edition host David Greene. “And of those 53, he found he could only reproduce six.”

That was “a real eye-opener,” says Harris, whose new book Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions explores the ways even some talented scientists go wrong — pushed by tight funding, competition and other constraints to move too quickly and sloppily to produce useful results.

“A lot of what everybody has reported about medical research in the last few years is actually wrong,” Harris says. “It seemed right at the time but has not stood up to the test of time.”

The impact of weak biomedical research can be especially devastating, Harris learned, as he talked to doctors and patients. And some prominent scientists he interviewed told him they agree that it’s time to recognize the dysfunction in the system and fix it.

 

Tom Murphy was a healthy rugby player diagnosed with ALS in his 50s. …. With his doctor’s help he signs up for an experimental treatment with a drug called dexpramipexole, or “Dex.” At first, he’s very hopeful, and it seems to be helping him, but they run the tests and figure out that it actually doesn’t work. In fact none of the ALS drugs work. I focus on Tom Murphy because he’s a victim of the system here — of these failures.

What happened in the case of ALS was there were at least a dozen drugs that had been tried in a handful of small studies — way too small — of animals. And they all seemed to have some sort of promise — some of them went into very large clinical trials. We spent tens of millions of dollars developing these drugs, and they all failed. There’s a group in Cambridge, Mass. — the ALS Therapy Development Institute — that went back and reviewed all these studies and realized all the initial studies were wrong. They used very few mice. They weren’t thinking enough about the different genetics of the mice. And a lot of other problems. … This therapy institute came away thinking none of these drug candidates were really realistic.

On the ways the scientific enterprise in Charles Darwin’s time was very different

Darwin was very interesting. It took him decades to come up with his theory of evolution and he was not in a hurry — he was studying barnacles, he was studying birds, all sorts of things. He felt no pressure to publish until somebody came up with a similar idea, and he decided, ‘Hmmm … maybe I do want to be first. …” But we’re not in that world anymore. Things are very competitive, very fast-paced. So the competitive world of biomedicine is shaping this problem of evidence that can’t be replicated a lot.

On why the delight that’s long been an intrinsic part of science can disappear over time — and why that’s bad

I think a lot of people go into science out of a sense of wonder. But … as time goes on, people feel the career pressures, and they realize it isn’t just about exploring and having big ideas. They have to have research that helps them progress toward their first job, toward tenure, then the next grant, and so on. Those pressures are different from just, sort of, exploring and understanding fundamental biology…. And the less you’re focusing on delight, the less maybe you’re aiming at the truth and the more you are, inadvertently, often aiming at other goals — career goals, financial goals and so on. This may give you a fruitful life as an individual, but may produce less value to us as a society.

On how the public should respond when they hear of a big biomedical advance

I think it is good to question it. Every time you hear something like this, just remember, it’s all contingent — here is one study, and it may not stand the test of time. I think that’s healthy. … When scientists read the scientific literature, they realize, “Oh, probably half of this is wrong.” It’s just, not knowing which half — that’s the vexing part.

On the risk that pointing out flaws in science will make people question its value

It’s always uncomfortable to point out problems, but it’s also essential. I mean, we are taxpayers — we are citizens, and we support this enterprise and we expect to reap its rewards. If it’s not operating at full steam … and not doing everything right, it’s worth pointing that out and saying, “No. Think about this. Let’s make it better.” Many prominent scientists agree with me and are concerned about this — and are thinking hard about how to make things better, from the top of NIH on down. There are solutions, and I talk about them in my book.

On why the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to NIH funding wouldn’t make things better

It’s a very appealing idea, obviously, to say, “Oh, well, let’s just identify the waste and root it out.” But that’s not the way science works. … If you cut the [$30 billion] budgetof the National Institutes of Health, you’re going to shrink that already very small pool of money even smaller, and you’re going to increase the competitive pressures. You’re going to increase all these perverse incentives that put us in this position to begin with. So I think that would actually be devastating to biomedical research.

Source:http://www.npr.org