There have been several articles in recent days about how scientists discovered that a drug that achieved good results in the disease they were studying achieved those results NOT by the mechanism of action that they expected, but by some other pathway that they are theorizing about but don't know which one it is with good evidence yet.

We know that many great discoveries have been made accidentally, by observation. Willow bark tea for pain relief (aka aspirin); penicillin, need I say more?; gold salts as shots for rheumatoid arthritis. "Quackery" or "traditional" medications, or "let's try this, gold is good" --resulting in good treatments.

So whether or not the mechanism of action is understood fully, when we see that the mouse model seems actually to be predictive of results in humans, as is so often is NOT -- this indeed gives me hope that the drug will work on these horrendous neurological diseases.

I'm particularly intrigued that it may be affecting mitochondria, as the theory that Alzheimer's is caused by brain cells starving to death because they lose the ability to metabolize glucose seems to have lots of anecdotal evidence backing it up. People who use the alternative source of energy for brain cells, medium-chain triglycerides, seem to progress more slowly down the Alzheimer's pathway to doom.