I’m a little surprised that nobody has posted this yet.
Obviously, more research will have to be done. But if this finding holds up, this could very well be a true turning point in dealing with Alzheimer’s.
Little surprised? Well lots of us are jaded: we constantly hear of incredible medical breakthroughs–but which don’t end up amounting to much if anything.
The relationship between guts (or the digestive system overall), bacteria and inflammation and various diseases including neural ones like Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons is intensely being studied.
So this is only a bit of surprise: mouth not intestines.
Mice are not people. They make nice preliminary models for working out some basic principles on mammals, but perhaps about 1 out of 1000 announcements about breakthroughs using mice end up having a glimmer of applicability for humans.
It’s good we’re learning more; we’ve got to figure out the details to hope to find solutions for these very complex problems. But this is a looong ways from being certain about any clinical relevancy for us humans.
There is also this interesting research - about a toxin, BMAA found in Cyanobacteria and a theory linking the BMAA toxin and neurological disease.
Actually, it’s not really a surprise about the mouth, either. A link between gingivitis and Alzheimers has been suggested before, several years ago, in fact.[sup]1[/sup] This is confirmational evidence, although it doesn’t make it absolutely certain.
[sup]1[/sup] My cite here is an article from 2016 in Science News, but unfortunately, you have to be a subscriber to access it online.
I was going to, but I forgot.
I’d hope this leads somewhere important, but I’ve also gotten wary of “this is the answer” breakthroughs.
I remember when (not too many years ago) there was a wildly enthusiastic thread here about the cause of MS being distended neck veins, which could be fixed and MS greatly improved or cured through surgery. Didn’t pan out.
You are a bad man. 
I recall that thread, but can’t presently find it. could you summon up a link to assist my fading memory?
Multiple Sclerosis - Liberation Treatment
The new study mentioned in post #133, although it was 2 years old by that point.
After 30 years of “breakthroughs” with MS as my dad suffered more and more I have become skeptical about these claims but in this case I think that waiting for the clinical trials to be completed will be interesting to see.
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau3333/tab-pdf
As there are already almost 400 papers on Porphyromonas gingivalis in 2019 claiming it is the cause of everything form cancer to AD I am a bit skeptical as we rarely find broad miracle cures for broad non-related issues with one cause.
I will be happy if my skepticism proves false.
Very different from Alzheimers, but gingivitis in pregnancy is supposedly risky for the fetus:
“Research suggests that the bacteria that cause inflammation in the gums can actually get into the bloodstream and target the fetus, potentially leading to premature labor and low-birth-weight (PLBW) babies.”
“periodontal diseases represent a previously unrecognized and clinically significant risk factor for preterm low birth weight”
So a vaccine against gingivitis, if effective, would be a wide-ranging public health breakthrough.
What about the argument that alzheimers is due to insulin resistance?
Is that entire theory thrown out, or is it tied in somehow?
I too have seen claims that fizzled out. That’s precisely why I said “possible” breakthrough, and pointed out the need for more research.
I guess cautious optimism is too subtle for you folks to understand.
Hardly. :rolleyes:
How about understanding healthy skepticism? When I hear a claim about a breakthrough, I want to know who’s claiming it, what their credentials are, and how do they know what they claim is true. If they can’t pass all 3, I won’t keep thinking about it. If they’re already brilliant scientists, but they performed a lousy experiment, or overstated the results, I won’t either.
Wouldn’t this kind of link be immediately evident since different cultures have very different dental hygiene practices? There are some cultures where they brush/floss multiple times a day vs others where they never brush their teeth.
I don’t think everyone is $H!++ing on your thread, Flyer. I think the general reception is rather cautious, as is typical of this board.
I recall a few years ago that there were some articles pointing at acid-fighting drugs like Pepcid and Zantax as a cause of Alzheimers – or at least related to a spike in occurrence over the previous decade.
My point being *here’s another potential culprit *is just another potential culprit and, as the skepticism around here goes, we’ll wait until further studies are done. I appreciate the information but I’ll wait to get excited.
That said, I was still active in publishing (turn of the century, then) when I read in the journal-aggregator Discovery# some discussions and speculation that the “Salk Model” was pretty much dead – one problem/one cause worked for polio, chicken pox, and even the common (?) cold but the stuff bioscientists were now chasing seemed to have aggregate causes and/or single causes triggering multiple problems.
–G!
#I liked having access to that publication, even if I couldn’t hope to directly understand the journal articles from Lancet, AMA, etc. Alas, that was so long ago they are all but forgotten.
BTW: Good to see you’re still out there, Qadgop!
Out there? You mean out there on the hull of the tranship?
"Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship. Fools! Did they think that the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? And that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall…
I can’t pin down the date, but sometime last century Lancet, AMA etc stopped being anecdotal and started being loaded with statistics. Also, some of those journals adopted designs which made reading more difficult. I used to read that stuff when I was 12: by the time I was 40 they weren’t worrying if anybody could actually understand the articles. Now my favourite journal doesn’t even include the references in the print edition, which was one of the last directly understandable features (I could always form some kind of opinion about interesting opinions referenced only to other articles by the same authors, or whose best references were minor paramedical journals)