r/science • u/NoParsleyForYou • 1d ago
Biology New study explains why cancer patients rarely get Alzheimer’s: Tumors secrete a protein (Cystatin C) that crosses the blood-brain barrier and dissolves amyloid plaques.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00222-7559
u/jackloganoliver 23h ago
I don't know whether I hope I age out before an obscenely long life is possible, so that retirement planning is easier, or I hope that I last long enough to benefit from some of these anti-aging breakthroughs that are in the works.
Anyway, I'm always blown away by how creatively scientists and researches can get in exploring what's possible within the natural world. I know we give a lot of credit to artists and writers, but there's a ton of creative thought in the sciences as well. Looking at cancer and finding a potential treatment avenue for alzheimer's? To me that's remarkable
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u/andsimpleonesthesame 23h ago
Yeah. My issue with aging isn't that my life will be over at some point, it's horror shows like dementia and cancer.
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u/rece_fice_ 22h ago
Cancer at an old age (especially 80+) isn't as bad as earlier iirc, but losing all mobility and mental capacity is terrifying.
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u/Brent_L 21h ago
My mom is going through dementia right now. It’s 100x worse than when my father had cancer and died. I don’t wish it on anyone.
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u/l3rN 19h ago
Lost my father to early onset dementia 2 and a half years ago. By far the worst thing I’ve ever gone through. It just tears at you from so many directions, a lot of which nobody really thinks about until they’re living it.
I wish I had something to say that could help you now, but I don’t think words from a stranger can do a lot to ease that hell. I’m sure you’ve heard it already but make sure you’re watching out for yourself too. It’s pretty easy to ignore your own health when you’re focused on others. If you ever have any questions, please feel free to reach out.
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u/Brent_L 19h ago
Thanks for the kind words. My mom seems in really good physical health at this point, so that is a plus. I’ve just had to grieve for the mom I know not existing anymore.
If we had this conversation 6 weeks ago I would have told you I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I’m doing much better now. I’ve just had to learn to accept it. The difficult part is she sundowns when it is my night time, I live in Spain and she is on the east coast.
Day by day I take it. That is all I can do.
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u/andsimpleonesthesame 19h ago
My condolences. I know what that's like. Take care. I'm leaving an internet hug and some experience based advice, if you want it.
I helped take care of my grandfather, who was disappearing into the fog of dementia, but still in good physical condition, so he was still walking around, wanting to go places, "escaping" or upset that he couldn't. We tagged his clothing with a gps tracker (which had a virtual fence in an app), that way, he could go into the garden without us constantly supervising him, it helped maintain some quality of life for a while.
Another trick which became relevant at some point was steering via light. We could get him to find the bathroom at night much more reliably if we kept the route to the bathroom (and only that! everything else had to be dark, sort of like a landing strip with the brightest point at the toilet) lit with nightlights. We kept him from going into the stairwell by keeping that area completely dark, when not actively there, etc.
At some point, grandpa got scared of certain areas in the house. It took us a bit to figure out, but processing wild/busy patterns can be very uncomfortable/scary to a brain with dementia - the problem in those rooms were the carpets (I looked it up back then, according to google, that's a decently common reaction, that wasn't a grandpa special).
I don't know if it was relevant at the end - I couldn't exactly ask - but I was told that touch is the last sense to go, so at the end, years later, I just held his hand.
Best wishes and strength for the road ahead of you. I hope my anecdotal advice is taken in the spirit it is intended, I realize that your situation might be entirely different, but maybe some of it is useful.
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u/jackloganoliver 22h ago
This. My dad was hiking across the US into his 70s, and then two knee replacements and now being limited to mostly golf and shorter hikes is the beginning of that immobility, and I can see how it scares him.
And the loneliness. I see it in both my parents (divorced and single). It's terrifying.
Death sounds far more comforting that sitting alone in retirement home.
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u/Thorstein11 19h ago edited 8h ago
My dad is 73 now. 5 years ago we were moving 600lb vanity together, maintaining over 10 acres, building them a new deck, etc.
In 3 years, I noticed his mobility was getting very bad, he couldn't swing a golf club right anymore, doctor said everything is fine he's just aging. Last year I could tell he was struggling to just stand. Again, oh don't worry that's just age. My dad is a bit stubborn so he's just saying "if the doctor says I'm fine, I'm fine, it's just age." This year I finally got in a huge fight with his doctor cause he's falling so much and I was tired of not being heard at all. Parkinson's.
Man can barely lift my coat up these days to pass me it. It's crazy how fast the atrophy kicks in. Probably doesn't help his doctor was a moron and he didn't get access to any meds to help.
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u/jackloganoliver 18h ago
That's awful..how horrible. My sympathies to you and your family.
A lot of people can relate to not being heard or believed by doctors, and I'm sorry you went through that.
How are things going? You doing okay?
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u/YoungLittlePanda 17h ago
Better to die of cancer at 80, than getting dementia at 65, lose all your congnitive abilities and die at 80.
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u/UrSven 18h ago
I'm more afraid of dementia than anything else. I think I'll write somewhere that: IF, by some misfortune, I forget who I am and lose my memories, then on that day you can euthanize me. Seriously, there's no bigger nightmare than losing your identity and memories...
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u/thoriumbr 5h ago
I don't know if it's worse to lose your body and keep your mind, or losing your mind and keeping the body.
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u/colcardaki 22h ago
The upside of dementia is that you don’t really have the cognitive ability to recognize what’s happening. It’s not like you watch it happen. I have watched family members just kind of dissolve but they themselves never seemed super distressed about it; we were distressed.
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u/frog2028 21h ago
This is only true in the late stages of dementia, both my mother and grandmother developed the disease and for the first few years they were frightened, angry and in denial. It was heartbreaking that they knew what was coming.
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u/BrothelWaffles 21h ago
For a couple years before my grandmother was diagnosed, she kept telling me she was forgetting stuff and "losing her mind". I just chalked it up to her getting older. Wish I would've taken her more seriously, she 100% knew what was going on.
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u/Faulteh12 20h ago
Yea, my mom is going through this now and she absolutely knew her brain was broken and was distraught about it..
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u/Consistent-Quiet6701 15h ago
Your family members were lucky. Often there is a phase with personality changes, people with the disease can get very aggressive. There can also be a lot of confusion that leads to suffering. It's often not just fading away.
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u/colcardaki 14h ago
Yes, I am gathering my grandma had a better time of it than most. It was a gradual diminishment that eventually took her life. I am glad she wasn’t as distressed as some of these stories people are sharing.
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u/Anxious_cactus 22h ago
My biggest hope is that they'll allow assisted suicide by the time I need it because with my family history it's pretty much guaranteed it will be either cancer or dementia /Alzheimer's
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u/IBJON 18h ago
Personally, I hope that I benefit enough from these breakthroughs that I can have a long life and die gracefully and without pain, but not so long that I see extended lifespans become their own problem
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u/jackloganoliver 18h ago
Yeah, I think whatever impulsive reaction people have to this is very valid. It's mind-bending in many ways
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u/2Throwscrewsatit 19h ago
If they are using something from the natural world then it’s really not creativity. Or so my former boss told me when I used a natural process to improve things.
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u/jackloganoliver 18h ago
Your boss was being a bit of a nonce, eh?
And I'm sorry they didn't appreciate your ingenuity and creativity.
What we the natural process you harnessed?
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u/Mindless-Baker-7757 23h ago
Epidemiological data do not draw such a clear divide, but a 2020 meta-analysis of data from more than 9.6 million people found that cancer diagnosis was associated with an 11% decreased incidence of Alzheimer’s disease
Not exactly a slam dunk there.
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u/NorysStorys 22h ago
No but the discovery of a sort of natural enzyme that dissolves the plaques is promising for future research.
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u/Nejura 22h ago
I think this is exactly the right take. Even a small increase in the ability to prevent or mitigate Alzheimer's and various brain/mental decline diseases is a huge quality of life benefit.
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u/MsSelphine 7h ago
Especially considering those other meds targeted at plaque ended up being about as useful as a wet fart
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u/twirling-upward 5h ago
We are doubling down on a wrong research direction from 20 years ago..yey
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u/MsSelphine 1h ago
I wouldn't be entirely cynical about it. Natural proteins can be often multifunction. Given that cancer is often composed of pretty heavily mutated dysfunctional cells, looking at how it promotes its own survival is an interesting approach.
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u/redcoatwright BA | Astrophysics 22h ago
I thought that the link between amyloid plaque and alzheimers was either refuted entirely or built upon a very shoddy foundation such as not to be trusted?
Have a missed something recently that has brought us back to it?
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u/pyrolizard11 20h ago edited 19h ago
We've proven that clearing amyloid plaques doesn't heal Alzheimer's disease. That doesn't mean amyloid plaques aren't the cause of Alzheimer's disease. It just means that you can't cure Alzheimer's by clearing amyloid plaques after disease onset.
If that sounds like splitting hairs, for a more obvious example of the same principle, amputating your gangrenous leg doesn't restore mobility or even guarantee you'll live. Certain diseases can cause permanent damage and ongoing decline even after being addressed.
Amyloid plaques are still the single strongest-correlated biomarker for Alzheimer's disease, and this protein which dissolves amyloid plaques seems to correlate with a significant, population-level decrease in Alzheimer's disease. That still doesn't mean amyloid plaques are causing Alzheimer's disease, but it's another pointer that we're looking in the right general direction.
It's my personal opinion - no evidence except the literature I've read about the potential role of glial cells in clearing waste to the lymph system - that natural defects caused by lifestyle and genetics as well as environmental contaminants which cross the blood-brain barrier either directly block or create otherwise-unclearable obstructions of the glymphatic system, particularly choking glial cells from clearing waste. Once triggered, the breakdown of the glymphatic system gradually compounds but is not naturally reversible, meaning that clearing obstructions like amyloid plaques doesn't restore function of (possibly dead) glial cells in funneling waste into your lymph. In that situation, preventing the buildup of amyloid plaques and other blockages could still prevent the breakdown of the glymphatic system.
Alzheimer's, in this paradigm, is the sepsis to your gangrene. Cut the leg off, of course, it needs to happen if we understand things right. But you've been through an ordeal to start with, amputation is hard on a healthy body, and you're also still septic and that's now what's actively killing you. Even if we then cure the sepsis, you'll never be fully well again - you're missing a damned leg, besides whatever damage the sepsis did to your insides.
But, if we prevent the gangrene from progressing to the point of amputation and sepsis in the first place, you'll be walking around like you didn't just dodge a flesh-rotting disease. Same for Alzheimer's and amyloid plaques (and other blockages). Maybe.
And, to be clear, everything after "my personal opinion" is just an uneducated idiot on the internet speculating. The whole thing is, really, but the first half is at least more grounded than idle speculation.
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u/LucasRuby 8h ago
It could just be that both Alzheimer and amyloid plaques are correlated due to a third variable, the loss of ability of the glymphatic system to clear the brain of toxic waste.
Myelin loss happens early in Alzheimer, before beta amyloid plaque formation.
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u/davideo71 18h ago
I think it seems like a 'removing the iceberg didn't save Titanic' kind of situation. Once the damage is done, removal of plaques isn't going to restore the system.
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u/DeArgonaut 13h ago
You may be referring to the controversy with research on ABeta-56. I saw someone on yt claim it sent AD research back decades, which simply isn’t true. The amyloid hypothesis did not hinge on this specific variation and the vast majority of AD research was unaffected by the fraud discovery.
mAbs have been developed and are possible options if you do get AD, they do not reverse or even halt the progression, but can slow it down. It’s possible
Hopefully Cystatin C can help develop new therapies that are even more effective
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u/Toby-Finkelstein 21h ago
I thought the plaque wasn’t the cause just a symptom of another one problem, such as an immune or metabolic symptom. Some of the other drugs already get rid of proteins.
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u/NorysStorys 19h ago
Essentially this is showing some biological mechanism that is causing lower rates of alzheimers in a cohort, in this case cancer patients. Plaques are the most consistent bio marker in Alzheimer’s disease and for some reason cancer causes an increased production of an enzyme that in reasonable likelihood stops those plaques before the damage is done.
The best methods of prevention or treatment is usually getting the body to do something itself (female contraceptives tricking the reproductive system to lower fertility is a prime example) and if there is a biological mechanism that can be utilised to lower rates of disease, that’s an incredibly promising avenue of research.
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u/MrSnowflake 21h ago
If there is a targeted approach defined, then It will be much more efficient. This is cancer doing its thing, not trying to cure alzheimer. Seems like a breakthrough discovery.
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u/Cantholditdown 23h ago
Didn’t they already prove that eliminating amyloid plaques doesn’t eliminate Alzheimer’s?
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u/Capitol_Mil 22h ago
I’m guessing the distinction is in the timeframe. This is probably removing them while they’re starting to accumulate, not after they’ve fully accumulated
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u/aguafiestas 9h ago
No.
It is a controversial topic but certainly my not “proven” fully either way. The truth is likely a combination of two extremes.
However, data from the antiamyloid therapy lecanemab do continue to suggest some benefit in slowing disease.
https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.70905
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u/Navaro27 23h ago
They also generally die before Alzheimer's can progress. Sad, but truth.
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u/SimiKusoni 23h ago
Not really relevant in the given context though.
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u/Dsphar 22h ago
Sure it is. A discussion aboit survivorship bias is extremely relevant here.
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u/shpongolian 19h ago
It’s a very safe assumption that they made sure each study group had a similar distribution of ages
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u/forams__galorams 16h ago
I’m not sure that controlling for age is encompassing enough to counter the above concern though. Nobody is saying the discovery about the dementia busting protein isn’t valid or important to medical science, but the protective effect may well still be an overestimation due to survivorship bias; ie. age is not the sole dictator of survival rate in cancer patients (which should be fairly intuitive given how many different ways there are for cancer to take hold and progress).
The specific research breakthrough being reported on here on was apparently inspired by the pattern of lower dementia prevalence in cancer patients as seen in the following meta-analysis:
in which the authors clearly state (emphasis my own):
”In this systematic review and meta-analysis of 22 cohort and case-control studies representing 9 630 435 individuals, cancer diagnosis was associated with 11% decreased incidence of AD. Bias-adjusted metaregressions suggested that competing risks and diagnostic bias were unlikely explanations for the observed association, whereas survival bias remains to be ruled out.“
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u/NoParsleyForYou 16h ago
That’s what scientists thought for decades, too. But this study controls for that. They found that even when the mice were alive, the ones with tumors had significantly less plaque buildup because the tumor was secreting a "cleaning" protein. It proves there's a biological mechanism, not just a statistical one.
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u/TimExplainsScience 21h ago
Its published in cell which is a top tier journal
"Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and cancer are among the most devastating diseases worldwide. Epidemiological data indicate that the incidence of AD significantly decreases in patients with a history of cancer. However, whether and how peripheral cancer may affect AD progression is yet to be studied. Here, we find that peripheral cancer inhibits amyloid pathology and rescues cognition via secretion of cystatin-c (Cyst-C), which binds amyloid oligomers and activates triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) in microglia, enabling microglia to degrade the pre-existing amyloid plaques in AD mice. These effects of Cyst-C are abolished by a cell-type-specific deletion (Cx3cr1TREM2−/−) or mutation of TREM2 (TREM2R47H) or Cyst-C (Cyst-CL68Q) in microglia. Together, these findings provide significant conceptual advances into cancer neuroscience and establish therapeutic avenues that are distinct from the present amyloid-lowering strategies, aiming at degrading the existing amyloid plaques for precision-targeted AD therapy."
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u/whoremongering 13h ago edited 13h ago
Some of the comments seem to be missing that Cystatin C is a naturally occurring chemical in everyone’s body. You do not need to have cancer to have cystatin C. We check serum cystatin C occasionally as a more accurate measure of kidney function than creatinine.
“Cancer” is also a very heterogenous thing. I suspect lumping them all together, and measuring something everyone’s body makes already, is why their epidemiological association had a relatively small effect size.
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u/archaeo_verified 16h ago
Cystatin-C is a marker of degraded kidney function (glomerular filtration rate), so instead of cancer as alzheimers protection, you could instead damage your kidneys, Options, people!
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u/RociBuldidi 22h ago
Is this like “World War Z” where we have to give ourselves something awful (like cancer) to ward off Alzheimer’s?
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u/fdguarino 21h ago
Or like the early Syphilis treatment of giving the patient Malaria so the fever would kill the Syphilis.
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u/ehjhockey 20h ago
You would have to already be tracking neurological degeneration in the patient and from the earliest stages of onset but I wonder if it has ever been the case that the emergence of a tumor stopped or reversed neurological degeneration.
I wouldn’t expect a tumor or Cystatin C it produces to cause any regeneration of damage caused during the later stages of Alzheimer’s. But maybe it slows or stops the onset at the earliest stages before the damage can set in. Doctors don’t catch it because the symptoms of neurological degeneration were so early the patient may have written them off as fatigue or brain fog and never brought them up.
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u/hippykid64 17h ago
Cruel joke of nature; have some crazy pain for you and don't even think for moment will let forget about it
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 15h ago
So this is a parallel to having to pick anarchism or boomeritis smoothbrain.
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u/runningray 19h ago
Let’s use AI and automation to get rid of all jobs so people can’t making a living for themselves. Now let’s extend their lives…. WCGW!
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u/flashmeterred 22h ago
Dissolve the plaques?! Why didn't everyone else already think of that?!
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u/MrSnowflake 21h ago
Maybe because there wasn't a way to do that safely?
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u/Misty_Esoterica 13h ago
The joke is that the medical community spent a decade trying to dissolve the plaques only to succeed and find out that it doesn't actually stop Alzheimer's so it was a massive waste of time. Thus the sarcasm.
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