Hmmm.. this post seems overconfident. Also it’s a seriously way out there hypothesis. But between RA+AS+IBD+prostate Ca we’re probably talking about a few percent of first-world morbidity, or at least health expenditures. The authors’ include some folks with great credentials, and the written argument in Laurence 2018 is seemingly reasonable (on a skim). Very plausible that I’ve missed glaring mistakes in their analysis, but if not this seems like a high EV experiment.
Hi Ryan, Your analysis is correct: either this project will have a large impact, or the hypothesis on which it is based is wrong. Finding out is important. Laurence et al 2018 concludes by saying: “Since the evidence available at this time is insufficient to definitely confirm the Catterall–King hypothesis, microbiome studies similar to that performed by Kellermayer et al (138) should be performed to test this hypothesis.” When we wrote this phrase a year ago, we did not know that IBD had been strongly associated with Malassezia by a second research group. Check Dr. Richard’s presentation here: https://www.isham2018.org/resources/uploads/sites/2/Full-program-including-abstracts-.pdf
Hm, RA + Prostate Ca seems to be 0.3% of all DALYs and 1.2% of those in rich North America, based on Table A2 here. So the important matter seems to be evaluating the plausibility of the fungal hypothesis.
Hmmm.. this post seems overconfident. Also it’s a seriously way out there hypothesis. But between RA+AS+IBD+prostate Ca we’re probably talking about a few percent of first-world morbidity, or at least health expenditures. The authors’ include some folks with great credentials, and the written argument in Laurence 2018 is seemingly reasonable (on a skim). Very plausible that I’ve missed glaring mistakes in their analysis, but if not this seems like a high EV experiment.
Hi Ryan, Your analysis is correct: either this project will have a large impact, or the hypothesis on which it is based is wrong. Finding out is important. Laurence et al 2018 concludes by saying: “Since the evidence available at this time is insufficient to definitely confirm the Catterall–King hypothesis, microbiome studies similar to that performed by Kellermayer et al (138) should be performed to test this hypothesis.” When we wrote this phrase a year ago, we did not know that IBD had been strongly associated with Malassezia by a second research group. Check Dr. Richard’s presentation here: https://www.isham2018.org/resources/uploads/sites/2/Full-program-including-abstracts-.pdf
Hm, RA + Prostate Ca seems to be 0.3% of all DALYs and 1.2% of those in rich North America, based on Table A2 here. So the important matter seems to be evaluating the plausibility of the fungal hypothesis.
If you would like to better understand the scientific details, I suggest reading the “Details” page on www.malassezia.org .
Hm, I don’t have enough expertise to efficiently evaluate this. But I think someone should.