Highly editorialized title. "Transient multidomain functional improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin-containing mushroom administration: a case report"
This is exactly that. A case report. This is not a successful treatment. Far short of that.
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sowbug
I was recently reading about a phenomenon called terminal lucidity, where a person suffering from mental decline such as Alzheimer's spontaneously improves, recognizing loved ones, retrieving memories, and being able to carry on conversations. It's called "terminal" because the person usually dies within hours or days.
If this is a real phenomenon, then it's amazing to think that at least some of the people who suffer from Alzheimer's still have their memories inside their minds, as opposed to the disease erasing the memories from existence, which means that an effective treatment might recover their identities.
Psilocybin is one of those things we don't even know the full effects of because the government had a hysterical fit and completely banned it because people who took it were more likely to oppose the Vietnam War.
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40four
This exact case study came up on a recent Rogan episode with Dean Radin, PhD. While the result is very interesting and perhaps illuminating about the unexpected biological mechanisms, apparently the effects were very short lived.
Even more interesting, Dr. Radin discussed one of his companies is working on a new drug that uses the same brain receptors as psilocybin, that has the potential to induce similar effects (with no psychedelic side effects) with a nasal delivery system that crosses directly into the brain. The benefit of that, he says, is the effect would last for much longer, months perhaps, and patients would only have to take it a few times per year.
show comments
jszymborski
So, I'm not making any accusations or decelerations of "bad science", I've only read the abstract and this isn't my field.
That said, some relevant context here is that:
(1) Case studies are some of the most easily fabricated journal outputs
(2) This is published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, which is listed by some as being a predatory journal [0]. The Frontiers publishers are the fine folk who published an AI generated anatomical figure of a rat that not only was obviously incorrect to anyone you'd stop on the street, it'd give them nightmares [1].
So I'm not saying this paper is bunk, but that I reserve a healthy degree of skepticism pending some clinical trials or replication in animal models.
This case report is being shared widely across social media but it’s full of red flags from top to bottom.
It’s a case report (n=1) that a group of 3 people from Brazil wrote up and pushed into the publishing world. The report is full of big words and tables, but barely says anything more than the abstract: It’s basically “an 80 year old Japanese women received mushrooms and was better afterward” expanded with as much medical jargon as they could apply without accidentally getting too specific. No mention of how the Alzheimer’s disease history was documented or diagnosed or even if she was a patient of one of the authors.
I’m surprised how much it’s getting people to let their guard down and accept the result. Normally when studies get posted with only 100 to 500 participants the comments everywhere are full of doubters calling out the small sample size. For some reason this n=1 story written vaguely about extraordinary claims with a complete absence of pre-treatment documentation or standardize testing/scoring hits all the right notes to convince a lot of people that mushrooms can reverse Alzheimer’s disease.
I know it’s something that a lot of people would like to be true, but this is a domain where anyone in the world can make any claims they want and find a journal who will publish it if you pay them. People write and publish papers like this all the time claiming to have treated major diseases in a single patient or group of patients with different drugs or herbs.
show comments
hmokiguess
If it was my grandma I would treat her to some shrooms, I've taken them many times and I find them quite safe, I can't see harm in trying. If it would really works I don't know, but I would find value in the experience and consider it safe. Though the challenge would be explaining it to her and potentially dealing with her tripping.
UnfitFootprint
Good riddance - this kind of thing needs to be experimented with more. But 5 grams! This reads like witch doctor science; I’m surprised it passed ethics
show comments
sva_
> n=1
> pay to publish journal
> no clear Alzheimers diagnosis ("[...] were considered clinically most compatible with advanced Alzheimer’s disease")
> administration of a heroic dose of street-quality drugs vs. a controlled sample
> no university or hospital affiliation?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, hence I remain skeptical
show comments
godwinson__4-8
Reminder that the American federal government classifies psilocybin as a Schedule I drug "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse". Along with marijuana. And heroin. Who else but the DEA thinks those three things make sense to put in the same bucket?
Meanwhile fentanyl is Schedule II. The government is often the biggest barrier to psilocybin research despite its positive effects being acknowledged for decades. Depending on the administration (which will sometimes signal they won't actually enforce the law) these research efforts are often terminated, meaning it is often safer/cheaper to just never start them in the first place.
The key are the post-synaptic serotonin receptors. If the drug is able to reach them, these receptors trigger axons making new connections to other neurons.
Psychedelics are one of my favorite classes of drug. I used to take LSD recreationally every few weeks or months, until one bad vomiting episode caused me upper-esophageal sphincter dysfunction somehow. Ever since then, I can't seem to take any without throwing up (and generally having a terrible time due to stomach contents backing up into my throat constantly). Nobody can seem to figure out why my throat stopped working properly all of a sudden or how to fix it. :(
I'm glad that psilocybin research is picking up. I really think its potential benefits deserve to be more widely known and available. Hopefully without the spontaneously appearing dysfunction though
show comments
trio8453
Not quite a "successful treatment":
> This case documents transient multidomain functional improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following psilocybin administration. The findings do not imply disease reversal but suggest that residual functional capacity may persist in late-stage neurodegeneration and may become transiently accessible under specific neuromodulatory conditions.
Very interesting nonetheless.
> One month after the initial session, the patient remained continent and functionally improved compared with baseline. A second supervised psilocybin session using 3 g was subsequently performed and was associated with greater verbal expressivity, improved facial mimicry, spontaneous humor, emotionally valenced autobiographical imagery, and increased agility while walking.
> The patient spontaneously stated: “It is pleasant to come here.
Highly editorialized title. "Transient multidomain functional improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin-containing mushroom administration: a case report" This is exactly that. A case report. This is not a successful treatment. Far short of that.
I was recently reading about a phenomenon called terminal lucidity, where a person suffering from mental decline such as Alzheimer's spontaneously improves, recognizing loved ones, retrieving memories, and being able to carry on conversations. It's called "terminal" because the person usually dies within hours or days.
If this is a real phenomenon, then it's amazing to think that at least some of the people who suffer from Alzheimer's still have their memories inside their minds, as opposed to the disease erasing the memories from existence, which means that an effective treatment might recover their identities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_lucidity
Psilocybin is one of those things we don't even know the full effects of because the government had a hysterical fit and completely banned it because people who took it were more likely to oppose the Vietnam War.
This exact case study came up on a recent Rogan episode with Dean Radin, PhD. While the result is very interesting and perhaps illuminating about the unexpected biological mechanisms, apparently the effects were very short lived.
Even more interesting, Dr. Radin discussed one of his companies is working on a new drug that uses the same brain receptors as psilocybin, that has the potential to induce similar effects (with no psychedelic side effects) with a nasal delivery system that crosses directly into the brain. The benefit of that, he says, is the effect would last for much longer, months perhaps, and patients would only have to take it a few times per year.
So, I'm not making any accusations or decelerations of "bad science", I've only read the abstract and this isn't my field.
That said, some relevant context here is that:
(1) Case studies are some of the most easily fabricated journal outputs
(2) This is published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, which is listed by some as being a predatory journal [0]. The Frontiers publishers are the fine folk who published an AI generated anatomical figure of a rat that not only was obviously incorrect to anyone you'd stop on the street, it'd give them nightmares [1].
So I'm not saying this paper is bunk, but that I reserve a healthy degree of skepticism pending some clinical trials or replication in animal models.
[0] https://www.predatoryjournals.org/news/list-of-all-frontiers...
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/scientists-aghast-at...
This case report is being shared widely across social media but it’s full of red flags from top to bottom.
It’s a case report (n=1) that a group of 3 people from Brazil wrote up and pushed into the publishing world. The report is full of big words and tables, but barely says anything more than the abstract: It’s basically “an 80 year old Japanese women received mushrooms and was better afterward” expanded with as much medical jargon as they could apply without accidentally getting too specific. No mention of how the Alzheimer’s disease history was documented or diagnosed or even if she was a patient of one of the authors.
I’m surprised how much it’s getting people to let their guard down and accept the result. Normally when studies get posted with only 100 to 500 participants the comments everywhere are full of doubters calling out the small sample size. For some reason this n=1 story written vaguely about extraordinary claims with a complete absence of pre-treatment documentation or standardize testing/scoring hits all the right notes to convince a lot of people that mushrooms can reverse Alzheimer’s disease.
I know it’s something that a lot of people would like to be true, but this is a domain where anyone in the world can make any claims they want and find a journal who will publish it if you pay them. People write and publish papers like this all the time claiming to have treated major diseases in a single patient or group of patients with different drugs or herbs.
If it was my grandma I would treat her to some shrooms, I've taken them many times and I find them quite safe, I can't see harm in trying. If it would really works I don't know, but I would find value in the experience and consider it safe. Though the challenge would be explaining it to her and potentially dealing with her tripping.
Good riddance - this kind of thing needs to be experimented with more. But 5 grams! This reads like witch doctor science; I’m surprised it passed ethics
> n=1
> pay to publish journal
> no clear Alzheimers diagnosis ("[...] were considered clinically most compatible with advanced Alzheimer’s disease")
> administration of a heroic dose of street-quality drugs vs. a controlled sample
> no university or hospital affiliation?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, hence I remain skeptical
Reminder that the American federal government classifies psilocybin as a Schedule I drug "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse". Along with marijuana. And heroin. Who else but the DEA thinks those three things make sense to put in the same bucket?
Meanwhile fentanyl is Schedule II. The government is often the biggest barrier to psilocybin research despite its positive effects being acknowledged for decades. Depending on the administration (which will sometimes signal they won't actually enforce the law) these research efforts are often terminated, meaning it is often safer/cheaper to just never start them in the first place.
https://www.dea.gov/drug-information/drug-scheduling
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3530
https://www.cato.org/blog/trumps-psychedelic-order-speeds-re...
The key are the post-synaptic serotonin receptors. If the drug is able to reach them, these receptors trigger axons making new connections to other neurons.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48420481
Psychedelics are one of my favorite classes of drug. I used to take LSD recreationally every few weeks or months, until one bad vomiting episode caused me upper-esophageal sphincter dysfunction somehow. Ever since then, I can't seem to take any without throwing up (and generally having a terrible time due to stomach contents backing up into my throat constantly). Nobody can seem to figure out why my throat stopped working properly all of a sudden or how to fix it. :(
I'm glad that psilocybin research is picking up. I really think its potential benefits deserve to be more widely known and available. Hopefully without the spontaneously appearing dysfunction though
Not quite a "successful treatment":
> This case documents transient multidomain functional improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following psilocybin administration. The findings do not imply disease reversal but suggest that residual functional capacity may persist in late-stage neurodegeneration and may become transiently accessible under specific neuromodulatory conditions.
Very interesting nonetheless.
> One month after the initial session, the patient remained continent and functionally improved compared with baseline. A second supervised psilocybin session using 3 g was subsequently performed and was associated with greater verbal expressivity, improved facial mimicry, spontaneous humor, emotionally valenced autobiographical imagery, and increased agility while walking.
> The patient spontaneously stated: “It is pleasant to come here.
This is just wonderful.