Talk:Alzheimer's disease

Wiki Education assignment: English 102 Section 6

This article is currently the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2024 and 3 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Trijanas (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Trijanas (talk) 17:33, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Update this page to keep up with current Research

I have been looking at "Management" section of this article and it seems to need some help keeping up with current research of what treatment options are available whether they are options such as medications, caregiving options, etc. Jenna.Hill1 (talk) 02:55, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

update section with current

I found an article that explains what is talked about in the late onset section. Do you think this article would work as a medical article?

Andrade-Guerrero, J., Santiago-Balmaseda, A., Jeronimo-Aguilar, P., Vargas-Rodríguez, I., Cadena-Suárez, A. R., Sánchez-Garibay, C., Pozo-Molina, G., Méndez-Catalá, C. F., Cardenas-Aguayo, M. D., Diaz-Cintra, S., Pacheco-Herrero, M., Luna-Muñoz, J., & Soto-Rojas, L. O. (2023). Alzheimer's Disease: An Updated Overview of Its Genetics. International journal of molecular sciences, 24(4), 3754. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms24043754 Charliecougar (talk) 21:35, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I would not know why the Andrade-Guerrero et al (2023) article would not "work as a medical article." The opening box on this Talk page says: guideline Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) and are typically review articles. I read the 2023 review and am actively involved with a forum for Alzheimer's patients and Carers. On this forum we DO discuss the latest research, and as one of the active members (and chemistry PhD) I can say that the 2023 review is of high quality. 2A01:E0A:149:BEB0:A95E:D250:282B:AE2 (talk) 21:34, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

this can only take place after death.[20]

This is not true. Brain biopsy is done in living patients and provides tissue for biopsy. Although Brian biopsies are never done to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, they are done for tumors and infections in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. This should be changed to reflect the possibility of tissue diagnosis in living patients. Huntbobo (talk) 09:09, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I believe that more tissue is needed than would be supplied by a biopsy.

The reference that was on that sentence didn't seem to mention post mortem examination, but two papers cited later in the article (both of which are quite recent, 2020) clearly state that definitive or gold-standard diagnosis is post mortem, so I have moved those citations to this sentence. Mgp28 (talk) 14:34, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Perception

This article is currently the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2024 and 6 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Eg2619 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Eg2619 (talk) 00:58, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Removal of precision medicine approaches from Research directions

Regarding this change, I would like to ask for clarification on the following questions:

• How is WP:SYNTH applicable here?
• Do we need WP:MEDREV for stating what research is being conducted?
• Why are the following references not WP:MEDREV?
• Why would the content on machine learning algorithms be kept if the content on precision medicine is not?

@Zefr I would appreciate it if you could elaborate on these questions. Bendegúz Ács (talk) 20:48, 19 April 2024 (UTC) Bendegúz Ács (talk) 20:48, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with removal of the section as WP:UNDUE, WP:NOTNEWS and WP:RECENTISM (also see WP:MEDORDER recommendation). At every FA I've written, I have found it possible to cite the "Research directions" section to broad secondary reviews about research directions (see for example Dementia with Lewy bodies#Research directions -- that is, not about the researched issue per se); we have to take care these sections not become trivia or promotional pushes of every bit of research being conducted, rather stay focused on what literature reviews indicate specifically are the important research directions. Exceptions have been made in the past for highly publicized new or research findings based on large and well-controlled samples that got pushed in broadsheet news, but adding even those makes me uncomfortable (WP:NOTNEWS and WP:RECENTISM). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:12, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for replying! It makes sense for the most part, but I would like to point out that there is a really fine line between "broad secondary reviews about research directions" and ones "about the researched issue per se" in this case, as precision medicine is quite a broad area itself. Similarly, it is challenging to keep the balance between WP:NOTNEWS and up-to-date content (WP:MEDDATE), and I would argue that mentioning precision medicine would greatly improve the latter aspect of the article, since it seems to me that currently, precision medicine is the only at least somewhat promising research area.

I have 2 followup questions:

• Do you know any secondary reviews about research directions that are also recent? What do you think about this one? [1]
• Based on this, should the content on the machine learning algorithms be removed as well?

Bendegúz Ács (talk) 21:38, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Sandy's skeptical assessment. "Precision" medicine is more generally "personalized" medicine which has been ongoing in assessment of AD for decades with disappointingly little progress of use to patients and their families. In your 3 sources, is there anything that can be considered on the edge a research breakthrough for diagnostic or treatment procedures? No. The sources seemed cherry-picked and were used in the original sentence to project a cure, which we all hope would occur, but does not exist.

This MEDORG review on personalized medicine points out that it "is premature and inappropriate to use this research framework in general medical practice." Research showing progress and refinement of these methods would justify a sentence, but I am unaware of such a source.

The machine learning report was a real-world test on electronic records for predicting AD risk, published by a multicenter expert team. It seems reasonable to include mention of a rapidly-developing technology to improve AD risk assessment. Zefr (talk) 22:13, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

If this is true "assessment of AD for decades with disappointingly little progress", we should definitely include it in the article, but what I've seen in the original 5 sources is that it's still very much being researched now and there are even some good preliminary results, in particular this pilot trial: .

Here's a quote on which I would base this content: "The future of PM in AD is promising, as research continues to identify new biomarkers and targeted therapies.", from .

"The sources seemed cherry-picked": I tried to look for relatively recent reviews on Alzheimer's research, and I found this one: [2], which also mentions precision medicine. Please let me know if you have a better one that's also recent - the one you linked is not within 5 years and this is a heavily researched area so WP:MEDDATE definitely applies.

As for calling it "a cure", we can refine the sentence, but I think it would be important to include it in some way. I would also consider precision medicine a "rapidly-developing technology", just like machine learning-based prediction.

Bendegúz Ács (talk) 19:17, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

@Bendegúz Ács; I remembered that back in early March I’ve suggested you to be bold when editing the articles. I’m so glad that you didn’t follow my advice closely and edit as bold as I did :-) <well actually I just wanted to add a link, but I don’t know why it became “bold” at the end ... anyway>

Sorry for having set those not-so-examplary examples, but as you can see, I’ve tried my best ... and IMO the so-called “walled garden” (as someone had told me) is probably becoming a better place .. slowly ..

I enjoyed reading this and the other links that you posted. And your edit to the article inspired me to do a search which finds this and this, which I really really like. Thanks so much.

Yes, precision medicine and its use in AD has been under active research and has got the attention from government(s), as evidenced by the external links I added to to Precision medicine recently. There seems to be phase 3 clinical trial in the US too. I’m not sure if the links I found will be of any use. I do agree with you that it’s important to have precision medicine included in some way. But, as I’m not sure if *my advice* will do any good ;-) I’d better let others weigh in. Best, --Dustfreeworld (talk) 15:53, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

It was definitely good advice in general, but there are certain exceptions it seems, especially related to non-conventional medicine. So I've been trying to take a middle-ground approach where I do make a few bold (controversial) edits like this one, but most of my effort is not spent on these, but on getting familiar with articles, editing styles and policies instead, both by making less controversial edits and by observing what others do. I totally get what you mean by the "walled garden", and I also agree that it's slowly improving.

I'm glad you like these sources, I do too! To me, it seems like precision medicine is the only promising research direction currently, but I'd be more than happy to see other approaches show promise as well.

I'm planning to read a bit more about the topic, as well as try to find more (and "better") sources just to make sure I'm also not missing anything, and then come up with a suggestion that will hopefully move us toward a better consensus. Bendegúz Ács (talk) 18:44, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

References