AnUser
#197
Ultimately, the journal and the country where a paper is from doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny to remark on MDPI, the pattern publications in that journal follows. But I should start reading MDPI papers as I dislike this bias more.
Papers can be bad but not because of who published it or where, or in which journal.
adssx
#198
Most papers are incorrect or even fraudulent. The % of garbage is higher in some countries such as China, Iran, and Egypt. And then in each of these countries there are differences as well. If it’s from Peking University that’s probably okay. If it’s from an “Ethnomedicine” research group in a shitty uni in… Ningxia then it can probably go to the trash.
6 Likes
ng0rge
#199
Just a follow-up on this.
Neuroscientists believe one of the key mechanisms by which Alzheimer’s disease impairs brain function is through the disruption of glucose metabolism, which is essential for energizing a healthy brain. Essentially, a decrease in metabolism deprives the brain of vital energy, thereby hindering cognitive functions and memory.
In the brain, kynurenine regulates production of the energy molecule lactate, which nourishes the brain’s neurons and helps maintain healthy synapses. Andreasson and her fellow researchers specifically looked at the enzyme indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase 1 — or IDO1, for short — which generates kynurenine. Their hypothesis was that increases in IDO1 and kynurenine triggered by accumulation of amyloid and tau proteins would disrupt healthy brain metabolism and lead to cognitive decline.
“The kynurenine pathway is over activated in astrocytes, a critical cell type that metabolically supports neurons. When this happens, astrocytes cannot produce enough lactate as an energy source for neurons, and this disrupts healthy brain metabolism and harms synapses” Andreasson said. Blocking production of kynurenine by blocking IDO1 restores the ability of astrocytes to nourish neurons with lactate.
The next step is to test IDO1 inhibitors in human Alzheimer’s patients to see if they show similar improvements in cognition and memory.
And here is the paper:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm6131
This makes me wonder…what if you could improve this pathway/process? Improve glucose metabolism to provide more energy to a healthy brain. Would that improve cognitive functions and memory?
Another new article on the IDO1 inhibitor study from one of the authors.
https://theconversation.com/what-links-aging-and-disease-a-growing-body-of-research-says-its-a-faulty-metabolism-236047
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ng0rge
#200
My question is why do you say that? My search for “ethnomedicine” shows nothing in the study. Some studies could be good? Are you basing it just on location? Beijing vs Ningxia? Size of the University? Do you know details of the departments?
adssx
#201
“Ethnomedicine” and “Chinese medicine” are in the author affiliation. These are red flags for BS. And yes Ningxia was one of the poorest Chinese provinces. It’s now average in terms of GDP per capita, just thanks to their wine industry (which is quite funny given that Ningxia is a Muslim autonomous province). So the most cutting edge serious research will most likely not come out of Ningxia 
3 Likes
There is a discussion thread that talks about Chinese and Russian paper mills that turn out made up findings in research journals. The rate for these two countries as well as some others is a 50% fraudulent rate. For US and Western papers, it is about 10%.
So, I won’t trust papers from a country where 50% of the research is known to be faked.
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ng0rge
#204
OK, but that means that you are passing over the 50% that is legitimate and some of those may be very valuable studies or research trials that haven’t been duplicated elsewhere (yet). I think @adssx ,at least, is using some additional indicators and I would guess that people who know Chinese researchers and facilities could tell you with even more certainty. Isn’t there a resource for this - rating Chinese research? It can’t be a black box.
1 Like
adssx
#205
It’s not about discarding all papers from one country but 1/ trying to ascribe a “weight” to each paper you find and 2/ look at the overall body of evidence and not single papers.
So if 50% of Chinese papers are shit, you can give a “0.5” weight to each Chinese paper. (And then adjust based on the institution, the journal and the content of the article itself.) So you would need 2 Chinese papers from different teams reaching the same conclusion to reach a “1”.
This is just a mental model. What matters is to be as skeptical as possible given the vast amount of garbage published everyday by “researchers”.
2 Likes
I’d also say you need at least a value of 2 to even start considering action based on the research. There are too many one and done papers from China (Ex. Procyanidins as senolytics).
However I find this paper getting quoted over and over again in senolytic research.
1 Like
AnUser
#207
Is there a list of what journals and such to be vary of? I thought Elsevir looked legitimate, but it’s just a publishing company and the journals can be like the ones authors pay to publish there.
adssx
#208
There are lists of bad publishers and journals like https://beallslist.net/ and Predatory Reports - Predatory Journal, Predatory Publisher, Journal Publishers
You can also check if the journal has a Wikipedia page. If so it often gives a good idea of the quality of the journal.
Then you can look at the editorial board of the journal: top researchers from top universities or random people?
Can there be good research in low-quality journals? Of course. But it’s more that great researchers will always try to be published in the best journals, so if the best they could achieve is a shitty MPDI journal it’s not reassuring…
Then, even in the best journals, there’s a difference between a peer-reviewed paper, a conference abstract and a non peer-reviewed commentary.
And then you need to look at the authors of each paper, especially the main author.
This is just a sanity check to eliminate obviously bad papers. Even papers from great institutions in great journals can be flawed (or fraudulent such as the infamous amyloid paper in Alzheimer’s…).
5 Likes
ng0rge
#209
OK, ScienceDirect from Elsevier appears to be a high quality journal. It has a Wikipedia page. The study (that @DeStrider posted above on NMN) is also on PubMed. I assume that the study has been peer reviewed. The authors don’t appear to be random people (off the street), the first author is from the School of Pharmacy, Ningxia Medical University, but the second author is from the Department of Pharmacy, The Eighth Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen. So that is one of the top Chinese Universities in a major city. Wikipedia says - “Regarding scientific research output, the Nature Index 2024 ranked SYSU the No. 7 university in the Asia Pacific region and 8th in the world among the global universities.”
I’m just trying to figure out how to evaluate these papers and studies, using this one as an example, because it’s critical to how we value the information. Putting aside that the study is on NMN, it otherwise looks high quality.
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Blood tests for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other forms of dementia.
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Doesn’t matter who published the paper, it is not much of or a significant study.
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Apologies if this has already been discussed. I don’t think this particular video presentation has been posted so I’ll leave the post here.
This new (I believe) blood test, confusingly named Brainscan, developed by Dr. Bredesen looks interesting, though it is expensive at $799. It’s unavailable to me as I’m in the UK, and I wouldn’t pay that price anyway.
From the webpage:
BRAINSCAN is a simple blood test, a brain health check-up that may be the most important test you take this year. It combines three blood tests to help you avoid Alzheimer’s disease by “scanning for it” many years before any problems arise, replacing the need for painful spinal taps and expensive, inaccessible amyloid and tau PET scans to detect Alzheimer’s pathology. View a sample report here.
BRAINSCAN includes the following blood tests:
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p-Tau 217 – a specific biomarker for Alzheimer-related processes, which serves as both an early warning for avoiding dementia and a means for tracking disease progression and improvement.
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NfL (neurofilament light) – a biomarker that indicates ongoing damage to our brain cells from vascular disease, head trauma, or any neurodegenerative process.
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GFAP (glial fibrillary acidic protein) – a biomarker of ongoing inflammation and repair in the brain.
Note: These tests alone do not provide a definitive diagnosis and should be interpreted in conjunction with clinical signs and symptoms.
Video presentation:
Website:
3 Likes
Many Older People Maintain and Even Gain Cognitive Skills
Contrary to stereotypes of the doddering elderly, research shows that half of people older than age 70 stay mentally sharp
As I watched my parents’ generation reach their 80s, I was struck by the dramatic differences among them. A handful suffered from dementia, but many others remained cognitively sharp—even if their knees and hips didn’t quite keep up with the speed of their thoughts.
That observation runs counter to prejudices about aging, which were highlighted early in the 2024 presidential race between elderly candidates, but these biases permeate society in general. “The belief about old people is that they’re all kind of the same, they’re doddering, and that aging is this steady downward slope,” says psychologist Laura Carstensen, founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. That view, she says, is a great misunderstanding.
Instead research highlights the very differences I noticed. In our 40s, most people are cognitively similar. Divergences in cognition appear around age 60. By 80 “it’s quite dramatically splayed out,” says physician John Rowe, a professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Yes, there will be a group diminished by dementia and cognitive decline, but in general the 80-somethings “include the wisest people on the planet,” Carstensen says.
Read the full article: Many Older People Maintain and Even Gain Cognitive Skills (Scientific American)
6 Likes
Neo
#215
Interesting. Also does anyone have a view of his clinical trial that they say was a success for AD?
Pharmaceutical trials for Alzheimer’s have failed repeatedly, but a new study using a fundamentally different approach based upon the science of ***Dale Bredesen, M.D., has provided the first clinical trial success: using precision medicine to identify and target the drivers of Alzheimer’s or pre-Alzheimer’s in each patient. Dr. Bredesen and his team have posted exciting, positive results in their peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease .***
Actual paper
Results:
All outcome measures revealed improvement: statistically significant improvement in MoCA scores, CNS Vital Signs Neurocognitive Index, and Alzheimer’s Questionnaire Change score were documented. No serious adverse events were recorded. MRI volumetrics also improved.
Conclusion:
Based on the cognitive improvements observed in this study, a larger, randomized, controlled trial of the precision medicine therapeutic approach described herein is warranted.
https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad215707v
The approach seems similar to Dr Isaacson’s
Perfecting a Cocktail of Approaches to Treat Alzheimer Disease: Richard Isaacson, MD
And discussed on the forum before
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Not sure of the rigor of this science, but I like my sardines and salmon so I’m going with it:
This one food (fish) can cut your risk of Alzheimer’s by 30% — but the world may be running out of it
The good news about fish is that eating it regularly really can cut your risk of cognitive decline, or dementia, when you get older. And the more you eat, up to about 150 grams a day, the more it helps.
People who eat a standard portion of 150 grams, or around 5 ounces, of fish per day are about 30% less likely to develop cognitive impairment or dementia than those who don’t eat much or any fish at all, an international team of researchers has just concluded.
“Individuals reporting the highest vs. the lowest fish consumption were associated with a lower likelihood of cognitive impairment/decline, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease,” they reported. “The dose-response relation revealed a significantly decreased risk of cognitive impairment/ decline and all cognitive outcomes across higher levels of fish intake up to 30% for 150 [grams a day].”
Researchers added that they were most confident about the correlation between eating fish and a lower risk of cognitive impairment, but “for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease there is a need for further studies to improve the strength of evidence.”
The team — including medical and nutrition experts from places including Oklahoma, South Africa, Italy and China — reviewed all the outstanding medical research papers on the subject, consisting of 35 individual studies involving some 850,000 people around the world.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-one-food-can-cut-your-risk-of-alzheimers-by-30-but-the-world-may-be-running-out-of-it-e4fc5347
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Neo
#217
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02770-2
Brain clocks capture diversity and disparities in aging and dementia across geographically diverse populations
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03209-x
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