Thursday, January 14, 2010

CETP, Jewish Centenarians and Alzheimers

2005, I am at a lecture in a small conference room in the Annenberg building at Mount Sinai. You know the building, the huge black imposing tower at 101st and Madison Ave.


The speaker, Nir Barzilai. The topic: Living to 100. The take away, people that live to 100 have better defenses against the toxic exposure we ingest daily.

The biggest molecule I learned about CETP. Yup, CETP. So naturally when I learn about something I do a pretty big deep dive. Which is why I went out and bought huge amounts of Pfizer stock when I found out they were making a CETP inhibitor.....what a flop that was......goes to show, not all pleiomorphic effects or unexpected adverse effects are good.......

So imagine my surprise when @lindaavey @dgmacarthur mention that JAMA has a study on it....I listen.

But what do I find? Well, basically what the alzheimer association finds

This relatively small study suggests that variations in this particular gene - linked with long life and lower risk of heart disease - could also be associated with lower risk of dementia. More research is needed to fully understand this link. The government currently invests eight times less in dementia research than cancer research. This needs to change.'

I think this may be too much attention towards a subject in an attempt to hype a genetic finding. I remain skeptical. Since after all, I was burned by torcetrapib......

The Sherpa Says: Much ado right now, but certainly would be neat if we had some hard core modifier genes involved in APOE alzheimers....

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