this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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In our latest attempts to make lab rats immortal, a new compound has been shown to reverse late stage Alzheimer's disease in lab mice. This is a rare case where the title isn't even clickbait.

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[–] gibmiser@lemmy.world 66 points 1 day ago (3 children)

In a mouse model. The mice don't have alzheimers they have... something we gave them that looks like it... Hopefully it is similar enough

[–] DrBob@lemmy.ca 12 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

We did something to the mice then rescued it in a different way. Hooray! Next we'll save test tubes from cancer...again.

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 23 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

If you can’t get excited by incremental advancements, you should probably unsubscribe from science as a topic.

[–] DrBob@lemmy.ca 16 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Dude it's worse than that. I was a working neuroscientist for almost twenty years. So...jaded.

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

This is why almost everyone does development, not research.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 5 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

There has been a fucking epidemic of MD/scientists running to the media with miracle cures lately.

Mice do not get Alzheimers, they were engineered to show one aspect of the disease that has been promoted by fraudulent studies. As for the reversal, mouse brains are highly plastic and similar to a human baby, nothing like a >60 year old.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 6 points 21 hours ago

Well I hear we are adding more plastic to the brain through micro dosing micro plastics in our every day lives. Wait...

[–] piconaut@lemmy.ca 5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, I didn't read the whole thing but apparently only in 5xFAD mice. I wish they would have also tried it in a Tau model like PS19.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 hours ago

Both pointless. Mice do not get neuronal loss like human disease. These diseases have been stalled for 30 years on animal models generating "high impact" manuscripts that go nowhere.

Meanwhile, in human research, just taking vaccines can lower AD incidence by 30%. For real, proven. Not "soon", not "within 5 years" . That is far mor relevant than animal model studies.