The Cause of Alzheimer's

...and some related diseases. 

By a combination of observation and deduction, I have discovered the cause of Alzheimer's and some related diseases. 

 Lichen planus/sclerosus is an infection with a tiny mite which is exquisitely adapted to the human host. It is commonly at home in the biome of adults’ skin in our culture, and commonly without serious consequences. Like many other creatures in the common human biome of our culture, it becomes dangerous in certain conditions of the host environment. This creature can, in the right circumstances, cause the injuries of lichen planus/sclerosus, including wasting/erosion, open sores, pain, etc. This creature can colonize the sinuses, eye sockets and palate, and thereby reach the brain. Alzheimer’s is lichen planus of the brain. 

 MK Bretsch, 2015 

Orcid.org/0000-0002-7596-4002

http://pastebin.com/SiVmb4hJ

The Giant's Shoulders

He found the sign, I found the agent.

A pathologist who understood the value of careful systematic observation, took the time to examine, post-mortem, every patient at his hospital whose cause of death was listed as Alzheimer's. That patient, thoughtful man is responsible for the foundation of this discovery. He found that these patients all had notable ridges in their fingernails. 

I found that my mite caused fingernail ridges, and went looking for what I assumed was an already known cause, and found his paper. (Can't find it at present. Will post when I do.) His observation led me to look for concurrences between my observations of infection with my mite and what we know about Alzheimer's, to see if the deduction that my mite caused Alzheimer's found support in them. I found that it did.

Alzheimer's and mite infection share elevated cytokines. My mite shrinks tissue it is living on. The brain shrinks in Alzheimer's. My mite has different iron metabolism, and appears dark with iron in death. In human tissue, my mite looks like a tiny shred of cellophane, or a flat, white spot of goo. Alzheimer's has plaques, the formation of which has never been explained. My mite fuses with and tangles the growth pattern of human tissue. 

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Comment: If the taxonomists do adopt a new name for these creatures, it should go to that guy. (If it was a woman, I will be grievously embarrassed.)

The Path Shortcut

My assertion is that these creatures are responsible for two big sources of human suffering: Alzheimer's and bed/pressure sores. Learning to see them is a substantial task. I'm extremely visual, and have that gift of being able to imagine three dimensional objects while rotating them in space, and it took me over a year to begin to feel confident that I could explain what I was getting in my digital microscope images. Using this blog to teach this a couple of images at a time is going to take a while. Too long.

For the good of all beings, then, here follows a brutally short version of my logic: These creatures are both common and unappreciated, and therefore infections with them get misidentified as other illnesses. In the mouth and external vaginal area they get misidentified as lichen planus and lichen sclerosus. My assertion on Alzheimer's is that the white patches in these diseases are patches of these mites, and that this infection can reach the brain via the eyes and sinuses.

Camouflaged as Goo

Mite on tip of toothpick MKB 2014

The washed and stained samples in previous posts are a little bit tough to appreciate as mites, but not terribly.  This is how they look fresh caught from mucus membranes, covered in their own and the host's secretions. This is why this thing evades appreciation so easily.

Why a blog?

I wanted very much to write a proper science paper on this discovery and made some beginning steps toward that. But I am disabled, with limited stamina. It became obvious to me that that goal was  beyond reach.

More than anything, the cost of suffering from this thing weighs on me. Each day it goes unappreciated is another day of unnecessary suffering from it. 

It may be a crude tool for communicating an important scientific idea, but it is one  I can use, on my phone, from my bed.

The Toe of the Learning Curve

The creatures in this image are easier to appreciate visually as mites than most in the images I have to share. These are prepared: stained dark and washed. To imagine them as they normally appear in wet tissue, imagine them transparent and colorless, about the size of a comma in 12 point type, or slightly larger, and coated with shiny secretions and perhaps leucocytes. They look like tiny shreds of cellophane. 

Treatments

Mites as a class are tough creatures, and mine are just so and more. They are sensitive to chitenases, plant phenols and salicylates. Externally, laurel sulfate detergent, especially combined with citrus oil (d-limonene)  is very helpful.  Much more work needs to be done to find the best curatives and preventatives for infection with these creatures.