Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study
54 comments
·August 7, 2025stivatron
csaid81
Yes, but not only did they improve the memory of mouse models of Alzheimer's, they also improved the memory of older wild-type mice, which seems impressive to me. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09335-x/figures/1...
kovek
Could you share some sources that show this to be true?
modeless
Lithium orotate is available over the counter. People could try it today.
> Since lithium has not yet been shown to be safe or effective in protecting against neurodegeneration in humans, Yankner emphasizes that people should not take lithium compounds on their own
I reject this kind of blind safetyism. A cursory search suggests that lithium orotate has been used for decades, and the article suggests that "profound effects" were seen at an "exquisitely low dose" which should be safe. They're going to need a much better explanation of why people shouldn't try it.
jsbisviewtiful
> I reject this kind of blind safetyism.
You said you searched to learn more about lithium, but somehow missed that it's highly recommended to be administered by doctors due to side effects after long term use. Anything that damages your kidneys or thyroids can kill you, so calling it "blind safetyism" is silly.
hollerith
The kidney damage, etc, are consequences of the very high doses of lithium needed to control bipolar disorder.
Most experts who have been recommending lithium supplementation to support general health recommend doses about 100 or 300 times lower.
modeless
Exactly. An "exquisitely low dose" should be safe. And Alzheimer's also kills you, after making life no longer worth living. For people who already have it, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't try an appropriate dose.
rogerrogerr
It’s blind safetyism when an article writes “don’t do this because no one has proven it is safe”. Most people will read that as “you can probably do this but in the off chance something bad happens, I wrote these words so you have a harder time suing me”.
It would be more useful and effective for the article to say “don’t do this to yourself because it can damage your guts, see these links, there’s tradeoffs here”
The former just fades into the modern world’s background noise of unchecked ass-covering.
CoastalCoder
> The former just fades into the modern world’s background noise of unchecked ass-covering.
The missing piece of this argument is just what the probability of different legal risks is here.
Wether or not their ass-covering is reasonable hinges on that and on their risk tolerance.
tokai
>it's highly recommended to be administered by doctors due to side effects after long term use
This is at a clinical dose which is somewhat high. It is the dosage fund reliable as treatment for bipolar type 1. As long as you get your kidney numbers checked twice a year, at that dose, its mostly unproblematic as issues show themselves in the numbers before major damage.
tgv
Especially since mice are not really perfect models for humans. For starters: these mice were "12 to 24 months of age", whereas your typical Alzheimer patient is well over 30 times that. The article also links it to amyloid plaques, which is a contested hypothesis that may well have held back Alzheimer research for decades. To be fair, the article seems to look at more mechanisms, but that's well beyond my expertise.
modeless
12 to 24 months is old in mouse years. And the article offers a plausible explanation for both why plaques could cause the disease and why clearing them alone might not fix it without lithium supplementation.
alphazard
The error in "safteyism" isn't that the conventional wisdom will incorrectly identify safe things as dangerous. It's that risk and reward always exists on a spectrum, and the people best incentivized to get that tradeoff right are patients and caretakers, not concerned 3rd parties.
The error of the concerned 3rd party is particularly egregious with a disease like Alzheimer's, which presents a significant risk of ruin in the form of information death. It is totally rational to use an intervention that will cause you significant harm if it preserves your mind another few years.
adamgordonbell
People use it in much smaller dosages then it's usually prescribed to apparently beneficial effect.
I believe its also in the water supply in certain places, so if it works for dementia there are natural experiments already running on this.
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/low-dose-lithium-a-new...
cypherpunks01
Yes, it's already thought that there's an association between naturally occurring lithium in drinking water and decreased suicide rates:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-...
I would think naturally occurring lithium in some people's water would give pretty good control conditions to do a wide study of this effect on Alzheimers as well?
valianteffort
The addition of flouride to tap water supply likely affects brain development. Let's not go adding lithium too.
These things are simple enough to advise the populace to use on their own. The government should never play nanny, ever.
Mistletoe
This is fascinating, thank you.
Aurornis
I tried Lithium Orotate at the typical supplement dose. After the first week it left me feeling rather blah. Discontinuing it reversed the feeling after a few days.
I repeated this a couple more times with a repeatable outcome.
It’s very hyped in supplement communities with claims that it’s perfectly safe and side effect free. I didn’t get any kidney damage or anything, but I also didn’t get a positive benefit from it. Only subtle negatives that built up over a week.
UncleOxidant
The comment I see right above yours says "there is no reliable Mouse Model for Alzheimer's." So it's certainly not a slam dunk that taking OTC lithium orotate is going to prevent Alzheimer's. Maybe it'll work? (but you won't know for decades) And maybe it's safe as long as you don't exceed the recommended dose, but there can be interactions with other meds you might be taking (some diuretics will cause you to concentrate lithium, for example).
nyeah
"They" are just some people who did an experiment on mice. They don't know the effects on humans. It sounds like you think you know more than they do. Ok.
A paper is not like a religious commandment or something. It's, best case, some mortals honestly trying to learn something. Scolding them for admitting the limits of their knowledge is not reasonable.
connicpu
My spouse was prescribed lithium by doctors and it messed up her thyroid, it's not a drug to be taken lightly.
renecito
yup, because this could not be a scam.
You are free to try it, it's over the counter, no one is oppressing you here, Darwin is your friend.
WillAdams
A spring near where I grew up used to be considered a notable watersource, and was actively bottled and sold, with the marketing proclaiming the benefits of "Lithia Water" --- always wondered how trace minerals from wells and springs affects health, and how consistent the elemental content is from year-to-year.
stivatron
Watch out, there's no reliable Alzheimer's mouse model.
phkahler
Lithium-6 if I recall correctly was the preferred isotope (for the brain, not this study). I don't recall why.
MaxPock
Things I love to read.
I went to visit my aunt one day, and my favourite uncle couldn't recognize me. It made me think that Alzheimer's is probably the worst thing that could happen to a person. I mean, what's worse than not being able to recognize those closest to you? You work a lifetime, and then you go out in such an undignified manner.
I pray for a cure in my lifetime.
outworlder
It's worse. Not recognizing people close to you is really hard on everyone else(including people taking care of you), but since you don't remember, it's not as bad for you.
You won't even remember whether or not you had lunch. I met a grandma that was distraught that nobody was feeding her and she was hungry. Except she had had lunch already but couldn't remember. You forget where you live so if you get out of the house you can't get back. And many have 'sundowning', they get scared if they are outside and the night falls. It's not just the forgetting either, you start losing fundamental functions and eventually die. Not to mention the aggression and mood swings, which are aggravated if you try to point out that they are forgetting things.
It's a terrible disease. You cease to be you.
groos
What most people don't realize is that Alzheimer's - and its friend FTD - are terminal diseases with life expectancy just as bad as many cancers. Hardly anyone makes it to 5 years after diagnosis. The bodily degeneration that eventually results in the patient being utterly unable to function is heartbreaking. Forgetting things is a relatively minor symptom. It's also terrible on the family members of the patient whose mental health also suffers along the way.
switchbak
> It made me think that Alzheimer's is probably the worst thing that could happen to a person
I've had relatives die of Alzheimer's, and others die from other causes. Let me assure you that there are worse fates than the one you describe.
cubefox
> It made me think that Alzheimer's is probably the worst thing that could happen to a person.
Alzheimer's is slowly destroying the person, but this might in some cases be not as bad as diseases which leave the person in place but make them suffer intensely, e.g. from pain or depression. Though it's hard to compare.
a5c11
I'll take pain over slowly reversing to fetal brain development. My grandma had it, and it was freaking sad to watch her lose all body functions. I've already made a decision that when I spot first symptoms, and there won't be a cure, I'll finish all my earthly stuff, and will buy some good morphine.
ninetyninenine
Lithium is a strange drug. It also cures bipolar disorder and nobody knows why. It also fucks up the liver over time and basically people on lithium eventually have to make a choice between dying or being insane.
exmadscientist
It's mostly the kidneys that get damaged, not so much the liver. It also has a massive amount of benign or merely annoying side effects. Lithium might even be the drug with the largest overall amount of side effects. It's certainly a weird one.
High-dose lithium is extremely hard on your kidneys and may well lead to kidney failure in a decade or so. Medium-dose lithium is a lot more gentle but still requires monitoring. Many people can go down in dose after initial treatment, and good psych prescribers will attempt to do this after a while. (Or patients will request it, after the other side effects of lithium become noticable after the bipolar has settled down.) Low-dose lithium is much harder to study and may well be pretty safe. May.
It is not quite true that people have no idea how it cures bipolar disorder. It's definitely affecting the ion channels (sodium, potassium, etc), just like many other anticonvulsant drugs also used for treating bipolar. So the mechanism for action is not totally insane and unique. Now, why the ion channels are the place to go for certain people, that's an open question....
owenversteeg
I have to say that I think the current popular idea of "we know how X drug works in the body because it does Y to Z" is patently insane. It may be useful information, sure, but it's not really _why_ it works, because we don't understand how the body works. It would be like Toyota saying: "the Corolla works on gasoline because it burns inside the engine, but we have no idea why the engine breaks when you put acetone in it." It would be obvious that Toyota had no goddamn clue what was going on in the engine! And yet, that's exactly where we are with most drugs including lithium; most of these so-called mechanisms would work on rubidium, so why does rubidium have different effects? Who knows!
If you read a literature review for lithium's mechanism of action, it's a wild ride [0] that clearly demonstrates exactly how little we know. More importantly, though, is that all of this is made up ex post facto. Nobody can take a _new_ drug and tell you anything concrete about what it will do or how it will work: instead, we look at what happens and _then_ we make crude guesses. It is essentially modern miasma theory. For those who have forgotten, the application of miasma theory built our first sanitation systems, which eliminated more deaths from disease than the entirety of vaccines. That is to say: just because we are groping in the dark does not make the work useless, and indeed, our first vaccines were also constructed with very primitive methods.
I think that a more concrete understanding of the human body can only come when we start to understand all the many pathways of life in/on/around the body. Right now, our technology constrains us to investigate only individual points in mostly static ways. Give it a few decades of advancement and I bet we'll have some fascinating insights. I would also bet that, as with any complex system, there will be no simple answers to how things work.
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For what it's worth, in the specific case of lithium, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists would agree with me that the mechanism of action is unknown: https://www.drugs.com/monograph/lithium.html
[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40263-013-0039-0
exmadscientist
That monograph is not appropriate to this discussion because it is written for practitioners, not researchers. There is plenty of information on some of the things lithium is doing. My point was not "we have a complete understanding", but "we have some idea what is going on here, but there is still a lot we don't know".
Lithium is one of a large class of drugs that modulate the chemical potentials of the body's voltage-gated ion channels. There are a lot of drugs in this class, and most have been used with at least some degree of success to treat bipolar disorder. This class is also first-line treatment for many forms of epilepsy. The GABA system is directly tied in here too, and GABAergic agents are generally considered part of this class... and, guess what, they often help in bipolar as well. Lithium is a unique member of this class, and it is completely obvious (to a biochemist) that adding another species of alkali metal in sufficient concentration will disrupt the chemical potentials of sodium and potassium ion transport in the ion channels.
My point is: the first-level effect of lithium is well understood, and it affects an area that is well known to be affected by other drugs that have similar effects. So it is not total voodoo. However, you are also very correct that our understanding starts to break down after this. We can come up with new ion channel modulating drugs, and can reasonably expect them to be effective candidates for helping bipolar patients. What we cannot do is predict other targets or classes of drugs that might be interesting. That is where our understanding breaks down.
dboreham
> Now, why the ion channels are the place to go
Personal theory: these things are like "global constants" for the brain's GPU. Somewhat similar to the temperature constant in an LLM. There is no real "explanation" for why they work, they just have an effect. Various chemicals have various effects, often depending on the patient (because other constants vary, training data varies...) and we pick the chemical we like the effect of most.
bink
Surely the minimal dosage they're studying here won't have such dramatic impacts on the liver? It's basically what's available in some water sources. It's also available in food sources like leafy greens, nuts, and legumes.
hirvi74
That's quite a stretch. Lithium does not cure bipolar disorder nor is it effective in many afflicted. Also, Lithium is not the only medication for Bipolar Disorder, there are a double-digit number of alternative options.
Also, to my knowledge, we are not entirely sure why most, if not all, of the psychiatric drugs work. Plenty of hypotheses though.
nartho
I have (had?) a chronic skin condition called seborrheic dermatitis. It manifested as dry cracks over my lips and cheekbones exuding an orange/yellow liquid. It was itchy and looked absolutely disgusting. It would stay there for a few weeks and then come back in a few months. Treatment was cortisone which reduced the time it would but it would always reappear a couple of months later, it'd also lose effectiveness. Then my dermatologist prescribed a new lithium based treatment (Lithioderm) and after a first treatment, I got a couple of progressively smaller outbreaks, and it's never reappeared since then, it's been 20 years. I don't think we know how or why it works but I'm glad it did.
chevalier_1222
guess I'll add phone batteries to my diet
Watch out, there is no reliable Mouse Model for Alzheimer's. I was deeply involved with mouse models at some point before quitting my phd in neuroscience and I quite remember that.