Making the case for using Aβ-targeted therapies to benefit people with synucleinopathies (that's us!)

[jeffreyn]

Maybe a bit heavy for some, but a good read for many (I hope).

Aβ in Lewy Body Disease: Two Diseases at Once, or Another Beast Entirely? alzforum.org/news/community...

NB: In this article, the acronym LBD means Lewy Body Disease - PD, PD Dementia (PDD), or Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB).

PS: Note also the PD-related comment at the end by Alice Chen-Plotkin.

[jeffreyn]

As it says in the article, "More than 80 percent of people with PD ultimately develop dementia". What then to make of Alice Chen-Plotkin's observation that, in a sense, PD can be considered as a kind of "prodromal AD"?

[MarionP in reply to jeffreyn]

Unless or until there is some sort of illumination of some sort of chemical or mechanism link, it's out of left field and I'd ask her if she has any justification for speculating. Ice cream is not hot weather, they are unrelated, but several of their functions (increase, decrease) coincide. Is she thinking of something? Why do these words appear then? In a professional article, which makes it part of the "scientific record," the presence of every word needs to be justified, a good reason for being there. What's hers? The scientific equivalent of "so? So what?"

[jeffreyn in reply to MarionP]

If we replace the acronym AD with the acronym PDD, Alice Chen-Plotkin's observation would no longer be controversial. So the issue really is how similar are AD and PDD (and for that matter, DLB)? And when we say "similar", do we mean similar in symptoms or similar in pathology?

This article reports on research that found some similarities in both symptoms and pathology:

"... Aβ deposition correlated with cortical thinning in people with LBD, which, in turn, associated with cognitive decline."

NB: Remember that, in this article, LBD means PD, PDD, or DLB.

I'd be keen to see something happen in this space. Maybe a big, multi-year Phase 2 clinical trial involving PwPs and Aβ monoclonal antibodies.

[MarionP in reply to jeffreyn]

Some of the work seems interesting, but most all of it is of the "associated with" or "correlation" variety, which of course doesn't help us with whether the association is with some cause (if indeed only one) or some product (if indeed only one) of the disease, each of them. Always the problem with such links. And of those, really age seems the only consistent variable of really good strength.

And I'd prefer to have specified what these un-named various targeted therapies and treatments actually are that are referred to, by name and target, along with the "helpful how" specific discussion, or pointer to them. It might be of the most immediately helpful of the "meanwhile, what to do" variety of intermediate waiting. "What's the application" is always relevant, especially when hinted to in the actual article, which these were...it's like finishing an unfinished sentence, unfinished thought. Why should I have to speculate to fill in the blanks?