What’s the deal with Alzheimer’s disease and amyloid?

Key Points:

• A 2011 research paper linking amyloid-β protein to Alzheimer’s memory loss was retracted, part of a broader pattern of retractions and fraud allegations involving amyloid-β studies, despite ongoing clinical failures of related drugs.
• Amyloid-β was identified as a key protein in Alzheimer’s plaques in the 1980s, leading to decades of research and drug development targeting its aggregation, but these therapies have largely failed to produce meaningful clinical benefits and often cause severe side effects.
• The FDA controversially approved amyloid-β-targeting drugs such as aducanumab and lecanemab, despite limited evidence of efficacy and significant safety concerns, with aducanumab being withdrawn in 2024 due to poor market performance.
• Alternative hypotheses involving inflammation, infections (viral and bacterial), and the gut microbiome have been proposed, but these face challenges due to inconsistent data and the complexity of Alzheimer’s disease causation.
• The dominance of the amyloid hypothesis in research funding and publication, referred to as the "Amyloid Mafia," has stifled alternative approaches, and some foundational amyloid studies have been discredited due to scientific misconduct, raising concerns about the integrity of the field.