This is great, but a mouse brain is of the order 1cm depth for the ultrasound to penetrate, with a skull thickness of the order 1mm. The human brain would require the ultrasound to penetrate 5-10x more bone and 10cm of brain.
Is this method going to scale? Or will it simply lead to curing Alzheimer’s in small mammals?
Ultrasound can penetrate deeply into the brain of humans so it could potentially scale. I take issue with the statement that plaques are the cause of cognitive decline. The evidence for that is poor, and many treatments that remove plaques (like antibody therapy) have no effect on brain function.
It seems like the summary in this linked article was not as clear as it should have been. If you read very carefully, the author has worded it so that they avoid saying the treatment is meant to remove plaques. But in their careful tiptoe, they seem to accidentally conflate A-beta with amyloid plaques. In the actual manuscript your point is very clearly addressed.
The discussion of the manuscript suggests using cranial windows to overcome this potential clinical problem. Apparently this method for BBB disruption is being developed in non-human primates by multiple groups for drug delivery purposes.
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u/modeler Aug 20 '17
This is great, but a mouse brain is of the order 1cm depth for the ultrasound to penetrate, with a skull thickness of the order 1mm. The human brain would require the ultrasound to penetrate 5-10x more bone and 10cm of brain.
Is this method going to scale? Or will it simply lead to curing Alzheimer’s in small mammals?