The coming neurodegenerative tsunami

We may be on the precipice of a tsunami of neurodegenerative disease, neuropsychiatric illness, and dementia that the world has never seen before.

COVID-19 and Long Covid appear to act like chronic viral encephalitis, perhaps akin to HIV. Of greater concern is that Long Covid behaves like a prion disease.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is one of the most notable prion diseases, known for its rapid progression and fatal outcome, which includes marked changes in personality, such as agitation, irritability and aggression, anxiety, and depression. Prion diseases rapidly progress, causing a cytokine storm, mitochondrial dysfunction, and neural damage. They are also referred to as spongiform encephalopathies, partly because they essentially turn brain tissue into what looks like a sponge or Swiss cheese.

Perhaps the global escalation into polarization and psychologically regressive behaviors, such as attacking racial, sexual, and national differences, riots, and adolescent destruction of property in major cities, scapegoating, and the amplification of global conflicts, are all in some part due to the simultaneous inflammation of the brains of the entire human species, including global leaders who have their fingers on the triggers.

Rapid accelerations in neuroregenerative therapeutics will be required to address the neurological "hit" of COVID on the entire human species. I completed my postdoctoral research work in early-onset dementias and am honored to learn about many alternative therapies that I believe can help address this coming global tsunami of neurodegenerative illness.

Such therapies include plasmalogens, psychoplastogens, psychedelics, raw acidic cannabinoids, peptide therapies such as Cerebrolysin and P021, stem cells, methylene blue, molecular gas therapies such as oxygen, hydrogen, ozone, xenon, and light and frequency medicine, plus many others.

Most of these treatments fall outside the traditional big pharma business models. The pharmaceutical model has failed to address these conditions thus far. Therefore, we need new treatment solutions. Such therapies will need to be fast-tracked, akin to Operation Warp Speed, to address the coming need. New government agencies, such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), could assist in such endeavors.

We will need all hands on deck to rapidly innovate in this critical arena, which, to date, has no effective treatments. With virtually no FDA-approved therapies for neurodegenerative diseases, what other promising therapies need to be fast-tracked? How will we accelerate innovative treatments on a timescale that is more efficient than the 10 years and close to a billion dollars it can take to bring new therapies through the FDA?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10047479/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36977809/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10031181/

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/long-covid-symptom-personality-change-1243718/