The dementia that wasn’t there

You don’t need a license to think.  That’s what’s so much fun about reading the scientific literature (Nature, Science, PNAS etc. etc.) and, even in this case, the New York Times.   You’re seeing fresh data that nobody except the authors has had their hands on.

An article in the Times 6 October ’25 even asks for your help.   It concerns Douglas Whitney, a 76 year old man who should be demented but isn’t.  He has one of three mutations (presenilin 2) known to cause Alzheimer’s disease.  His mother and 9 of her 13 siblings died young of Alzheimer’s.

Mr. Whitney made it to his 60s with no dementia and assumed he was free of the mutation, but a family member writing a book about Alzheimer’s asked him to do get checked.

He had the mutation. The docs tested for the mutation twice more because they didn’t believe it.

He is now 76 and doing well.   He has been studied out the gazoo, and a few things have turned up.  His brain is full of amyloid, the major component of the senile plaque of Alzheimer’s, more than those of his family members dying of it, probably because he has lived so long.  This is further evidence against the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer’s on which Billions of research and big Pharma dollars have been spent, with little of clinical use to the Alzheimer’s patient.

Clearly, finding out why Mr. Whitney isn’t demented will tell us tons about Alzheimer’s and, even better, probably suggest ways to treat it.

One of the researchers studying Whitney is quoted as saying “Hey, here’s a really important person, a really important case, and you need to help figure this out.”

Well, here’s my two cents based on the NYT story (I haven’t read the paper about him, and have no idea where to find it).

They mention that Mr. Whitney was in the Navy for two decades working for 10 years in the engine of a steam propelled ship, where he was exposed to 110 Farhrenheit heat for 4 hours.   One of the zillion things they tested him for were heat shock proteins, something that goes all the way back to bacteria, to prevent the increased molecular motion (that heat actually is) from disturbing the delicate 3 dimensional structure of proteins.

It’s time to look at other Navy men with similar heat exposure and find out what the incidence of Alzheimer’s is in that population.  It’s also time to mine the United Kingdom biobank for people who take saunas (assuming they asked such a question), and see if they, in some way, have less Alzheimer’s disease.  Is the incidence of Alzheimer’s lower in northern populations where saunas are popular?   When I practiced in Montana I heard about ‘sweat houses’ that the Indians used, which sounds quite similar to saunas.

Here are a few of my notes on the the UK biobank.   It grows more impressive with each passing year.

      [ Nature vol. 562 pp.  163 -164, 194 – 195, 203 – 209, 210 – 216 ’18 ]  The UK biobank is based on 500,000 volunteers enrolled at ages 40 – 69.  All will be followed for over 30 years.  Blood and urine samples were obtained as well as a questionnaire about life style.  Initial enrollment took place from 2006 – 2010.  94% had European ancestry.

        [ Science vol. 382 pp. 980 ’23 ] The UK biobank just release the WHOLE genome sequences of 500,000 people.  Funding was from UK government, Wellcome, Amgen, AstraZeneca GSK and Johnson & Johnson. 

        BY 2010 the UK biobank had a prospective cohort of 500,000 people age 40 – 69 at recruitment (all of whom donated urine, saliva and blood in addition to filling out questionnaires, and consented access to their electronic health records).  Thanks to this the NHS will grow the 100,000 genomes project to sequence the genomes of 1,000,000 people through the NHS and the UK Biobank. 

      The only thing wrong is that these people are volunteers, hence atypical. <  [ Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. vol. 119 e2203327119 ’22 ] — the inclination to participate in the UK BIobank is associated with educational attainment, BMI and participation in a dietary study. >  The All of Us Cohort study in the USA is trying targeted recruitment.

It’s time to look at the data we already have from the sauna angle.

As Mark Twain said ” There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”