New Advances In Treating Alzheimer's & More Fake News Around Vaccines
Read more about how knocking out a gene can help the immune system reaction against Alzheimers and fake news about vaccination.
Modifying Immune Cells To Cross The Blood Brain Barrier To Treat Alzherimer’s
We have previously talked about Alzheimer’s disease and how difficult it is to treat because we do not fully understand the cause and since the brain is isolated from the rest of the body by the blood brain barrier, it is difficult for immune cells to get inside the brain to function.
The leading theory of what causes Alzheimer’s is the build up to amyloid-beta plaques. These plaques are built by a misfolded protein and are thought to lead to the cognitive decline that is seen in Alzeihmer’s. The blood brain barrier typically acts as a safety mechanism and allows a very select number of cells and other things in the blood to go through into the brain. This acts as a layer of defense and prevents potential pathogens from entering the brain. The brain also has its own immune system and keeps the rest of the body’s system from entering because the body’s immune system typically destroys a lot of healthy tissue in an immune reaction which would lead to serious consequences if it were to happen in the brain.
Researchers at the Air Force Medical School in China recently found that inhibiting a gene in myeloid cells can help slow down the progression of Alziehmer’s. Myeloid cells differentiate into immune cells like macrophages among others. Macrophages are one of the ‘eating’ cells of the immune system and engulf debris, pathogens and dead cells. The researchers found that suppressing the gene METTL3 allows macrophages to get through the blood brain barrier and attack amyloid-beta plaques.
This was tested in a Alzherimer’s model of mice wherein the METTL3 gene was knocked out and compared with a no knock out version. The researchers found that knocking out the gene enhanced cognitive function among mice but were not able to fully figure out the exact mechanism by how it works. So far it is known that METTL3 alters the expression of a few other genes which eventually allows macrophages to get into the blood brain barrier.
This is an exciting discovery since it would allow for another therapeutic area to be developed to treat Alzheimer’s but there is still a lot that needs to be learned about how METTL3 affects the immune response before the idea can be applied to humans. Additionally, another question for this work would be, how do we knock out the gene in humans in a manner that we only affect the target cells while minimizing effects on other cells.
Featured Fake News
So the fake news being thrown around this week is that health insurers are paying physicians up to $40,000 for vaccinating their patients.
The insurance in question is Michigan’s Blue Cross Blue Shield and the document being quoted is actually a real document, only from 2016, before the pandemic. Furthermore, the maximum incentive is up to $9,600 for childhood vaccines alone, not $40,000. The rest of the bonuses can be reached by having patients follow recommended medical guidance around age appropriate tests.
Furthermore, this vaccine bonus for $9,600 includes all the recommended childhood vaccines which can be found in the below table.
Additionally, this bonus has another limitation in that it will only apply for the patients who have Blue Cross Blue Shield. In this way, this bonus tactic is less about bribing doctors to get kids vaccinated and more about getting more doctors to come in network for Blue Cross Blue Shield. This is in-turn better for the insurance because it better enables them to acquire more patients since patients have the option to see more doctors.
Also, every BCBS in each US state is different and has their own policies. This document is specific to the one in Michigan. The fake claim though makes it seem like this document is universal, which is misleading. To see if this is true for the BCBS in your state, you will have to look up the updated policy document for your state.