The study showed that as levels of an inflammatory marker increased, so did the amount of amyloid plaque accumulating in the brains of those with Alzheimer’s disease.
  • jimbo@lemmy.world
    31·
    5 months ago

    The takeaway:

    Bendlin urged caution in interpreting the relationship between inflammation and Alzheimer’s, as additional research is needed to understand whether there is a cause-and-effect link.

    “We can’t infer causality from this study; for that, we need to do animal studies,” she said.

  • ReallyKinda@kbin.social
    221·
    5 months ago

    Inflammation inflammation inflammation everything is inflammation let’s just put all our research towards inflammation since it seems to be the root cause of everything

    • gramathy@lemmy.ml
      13·
      5 months ago

      Inflammation is a symptom, not a condition on its own. It being related to Alzheimer’s means there is a potentially single underlying cause

        • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          5 months ago

          No, it means it’s a chain.

          Something is causing the inflammation, then the inflammation causes something else. In that case you wouldn’t treat the inflammation, you would treat the cause of the inflammation.

      • agent_flounder@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        5 months ago

        Perhaps. Causality has yet to be determined in that case, it seems.

        But anyway, I swear I have seen several articles about studies in the last few years that indicate inflammatory responses can cause other problems. (No just covid).

      • angrystego@lemmy.world
        3·
        5 months ago

        We already kind of know how it works! The Alzheimer’s plaques are a malformed version of a brain protecting protein. It’s production can be triggered by inflammation. The protein is supposed to help you in case of emergency, but if you have Alzheimer’s, it forms into plaques and makes your neurons die.

  • atthecoast
    151·
    5 months ago

    Strange there’s no mention of crohns or colitis in this article. Both are monitored through calprotectin and you would expect a strong correlation between IBD and Alzheimer’s in this case

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      5 months ago

      My immediate thought. People with those conditions literally spend their entire lives, or most of it, with their guts inflamed. It’s only recently that they’ve come up with the biological medicines that can truly suppress it effectively for long periods of time.

      You’d think they’d have spotted a noticable correlation by now if there was one.

      • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
        3·
        5 months ago

        I have crohns and it resulted in the loss of my entire colon. Every time someone talks to me about the disease, they have no respect for it because they don’t know what it is.

        I was saved by modern medicine and am currently saved by it. And the advances that saved me are many. Those drugs you mentioned, surgical advances, dieting, all of it. If it weren’t for those, I would have died of organ failure my sophomore year of college.

        So to your point, why would they not have spotted it or noticed? Well, I think that severe cases of crohns and UC used to just kill you. But nowadays the diseases are mostly studied under the same umbrella. Crohns and UC present different, but any inflammatory autoimmune disease is similar and could have similar causes. There’s also more info that we’re getting about the brain and gut relationship. So if I had to guess based on current info I’ve found on the diseases, it’s a diet problem.

        I expect huge leaps to be made on autoimmune stuff, it could even be solvable through CRISPR.

  • Jeredin@lemm.ee
    11·
    5 months ago

    And so the simple saying, “you are what you eat,” must be updated to, “you are what you eat and how you digest.”

  • Rolder@reddthat.com
    7·
    5 months ago

    So follow up question, what should I be doing to reduce gut inflammation/ inflammation in general?

  • DavidGarcia
    6·
    5 months ago

    I’m getting the vibe that all of the “we can’t explain this” psychiatric disorders are autoimmune diseases. And famously the gut and immune system are very tightly connected. So this makes sense to me.