Psilocybin (psilocybin-containing mushrooms)
Lago, Cerveira and Simonet, Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2026
- Design
- Single-patient case report from a real-world care setting in São Paulo, Brazil. A woman in her 80s with a 10-year history of clinically diagnosed advanced Alzheimer's disease received one oral dose of 5 g of psilocybin-containing mushrooms; a second supervised session of 3 g followed one month later. There was no control group, no blinded comparison and no randomization.
- Who took part
- One patient. Before the intervention, her caregivers reported five years of marked functional decline, speech limited mostly to single words, dependent mobility and chronic urinary incontinence.
- Findings
- About 19 hours after the dose she began speaking spontaneously about her own life. Over the following days and weeks, caregivers reported restored urinary continence, more independent walking and dressing, greater emotional responsiveness and more spontaneous conversation. The authors describe the gains as transient and spanning several functions.
- Limitations
- The authors state that causality cannot be established, that spontaneous fluctuation inherent to neurodegenerative disease cannot be excluded, and that the findings should not be read as reversal of Alzheimer's pathology. There were no standardized cognitive scales, no neuroimaging biomarkers and no formal sleep or electrophysiology monitoring, and biomarker confirmation of the Alzheimer's diagnosis itself was unavailable. The dose was higher than those used in modern clinical trials.