Dietary supplement may prevent and reverse severe damage to aging brain...

[marthaNH]

Followed the link to Rhonda Patrick's page and read that the mice were engineered to artificially age via growth hormone -- so the supplement corrected for that. I wonder how much of normal real-world mouse aging is attributable to comparable factors.

Still nice to see the similarity in protocols, but not as nice as it would be if it was protecting against the kind of aging we are likely to experience.

[Edited because when I read this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27199101 abstract, it sounded considerably more reassuring! ]

[James]

Oh, DERP. I'll rent that sucker for $6 and screenshoot it all. Up yours, Wiley, and shame on you for forcing us to download bloody ReadCube.

Of course I'll share with the class when I obtain.

Use http://sci-hub.bz/ !!! Free access to almost every pay-walled full-text acticle.

[Julie G]

Thanks for that tip, James! Be aware that the legality of using Sci-Hub may vary by country or jurisdiction. Marc has crafted a site policy to bring us into compliance with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that we’ll soon be releasing. In the interim, we ask that our members NOT post links to full papers from Sci-Hub to our site to protect ApoE4.Info, Inc. Given our sympathetic cause and very small scale, the likelihood that ApoE4.Info would ever be targeted for copyright infringement is extremely remote. However, our board of directors is still advising caution while the legality of sites like Sci-Hub is being sorted out. Please DO continue to share any relevant papers by linking the freely available abstracts as we have always done. Also, per the fair use doctrine, continue to freely share any relevant quotes, etc. from the full-text of copyrighted papers for discussion purposes. Thanks to all for your compliance with this request.

[Victronix]

(New to this forum) I just did a search of the forum for "ginseng", since I've seen it mentioned in a few articles on APOE4 recently, and this was the top thread to come up, so I thought I would post this recent article here. I have a google alert for "APOE4" so I get a lot of odd articles and news items to keep up to date.

Biogen Results: Time To Change The Paradigm In Alzheimer's Disease
Aug. 3, 2018 1:52 PM ET | About: Biogen Inc. (BIIB)
Lane Simonian (**caveat - he is not an MD but does his own research of AD**)
https://seekingalpha.com/article/419443 ... ase?page=1

Summary
* The relative lack of Apoe4 carriers in the highest dose group for BAN2401 made it appear that the drug substantially slowed down the progression of mild Alzheimer's disease.

* Removing amyloid only slightly slows down the progression of mild Alzheimer's disease since amyloid is only one of many factors that contribute to oxidative and nitrostative damage to the brain.

* Scavenging the nitro-oxidant peroxynitrite and partially reversing oxidation and nitration likely stops the progression of mild Alzheimer's disease.

* It would probably be wise to sell some shares in Biogen before the next results are released.

The author states: ". . . scavenging the nitro-oxidant peroxynitrite and partially reversing nitration and oxidation leads to improvements in certain types of memory that are sustained for at least two years in mild Alzheimer's disease."

For that statement he references the study, below, which is more complicated than just "ginseng", in terms of the herbs they use, and is combined with at least one conventional medication (donepezil or memantine), but nonetheless, it is interesting to see the results:

Adding Chinese herbal medicine to conventional therapy brings cognitive benefits to patients with Alzheimer’s disease: a retrospective analysis
BMC Complement Altern Med. 2017; 17: 533
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5729264/

The authors state:
"In our study, over the span of two years, we investigated the effectiveness of combining conventional therapy of ChEI or NMDA antagonist with Chinese herbal medicine on ameliorating cognitive functions in AD patients."

* . . . patients were grouped into conventional therapy with herbal medicine (CT + H) or conventional therapy without herbal medicine (CT).

* Conventional therapy included treatment with Donepezil and/or memantine. . . . Most patients received 10 - 20 mg memantine once a day.

* The GRAPE formula was prescribed for AD patients after every visit according to TCM theory. It consisted mainly of Ren shen (Panax g inseng, 10 g/d), Di huang (Rehmannia glutinosa, 30 g/d), Cang pu (Acorus tatarinowii, 10 g/d), Yuan zhi (Polygala tenuifolia, 10 g/d), Yin yanghuo (Epimedium brevicornu, 10 g/d), Shan zhuyu (Cornus officinalis, 10 g/d), Rou congrong (Cistanche deserticola, 10 g/d), Yu jin (Curcuma aromatica, 10 g/d), Dan shen (Salvia miltiorrhiza, 10 g/d), Dang gui (Angelica sinensis, 10 g/d), Tian ma (Gastrodia elata, 10 g/d), and Huang lian (Coptis chinensis, 10 g/d), supplied by Beijing Tcmages Pharmaceutical Co., LTD. Daily dose was taken twice and dissolved in 150 ml hot water each time.

* . . . donepezil treated patients got a short-term symptomatic improvement, but patients’ scores deteriorated significantly from baseline at 52 weeks

* . . . the addition of herbal granule made more significant long-term benefits for AD patients. During the period of prolonged treatment, differences in MMSE between CT + H and CT became larger. A possible explanation for this phenomenon is that donepezil targets at the neurotransmitter level, a downstream rather than upstream effector of pathophysiological processes of AD. Herbal medicine, on the other hand, targets broadly, including Aβ accumulation, neuroinflammation, tau hyperphosphorylation, glucose metabolism dysregulation, harmful gut microbiota, oxidative stress, and other factors that play important roles in the onset and progression of AD.
---------

The study is cited by a few other studies (i.e., Network Medicine for Alzheimer’s Disease and Traditional Chinese Medicine http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/23/5/1143/htm). It will be interesting to follow this line of research and see where it goes.

[JML]

Hi Victronix,

Welcome to the site and thanks for posting these references. It is interesting to read about scientific results and the limitations on how the test participants were allocated in this study on an investing site like Seeking Alpha--the complex data is communicated to the investing world in a fairly easy to understand way. AD research is so complex and there are so many ways to talk about these studies.

It sounds like you figured out how to use the search function on the site. We'd love to learn more about you if you feel like sharing your story here.

[NF52]

...I thought I would post this recent article here. I have a google alert for "APOE4" so I get a lot of odd articles and news items to keep up to date.
Biogen Results: Time To Change The Paradigm In Alzheimer's Disease

Welcome Victonix!
I also have a Google alert for ApoE 4, as well as a few other topics, and it keeps me humble, since so many of the article topics are all but indecipherable to this former English major! But I too like to have a range of "odd articles and news items".
In that vein, I thought I'd share this recent thread on the same Biogen study results that you referenced.
New Alzheimer’s Drug Shows Big Promise in Early Trial Results

And in the same vein of research seeking to determine the benefits of a BACE-1 inhibitor using ONLY people with ApoE 4/4, this is a discussion of the Generations I trial. (Full disclosure: I'm one of the participants in that trial, on the BACE 1 "arm" with a 68% chance of having the CNP520 BACE1 inhibitor (which reduces amyloid by about 80-90%) and a 32% chance of having a placebo. It's a 5 year trial, with a 3 year voluntary extension at the end, so with one year in, I have 7 years to help test the BACE 1 hypothesis. My own view is finding definitive (I hope) answers is a role I can play for myself and others.
A provocative critique of Banner's 4/4 RCT

I hope you join in the discussions and share your own ideas, questions and expertise!

[Victronix]

Hi! Great to see that thread. Also, I'd never heard of the BACE hypothesis. Will take a look at that too. Thanks!