Bacteria and Alzheimer’s disease: I just need to know if ten patients are enough

You can guarantee that when scientists publish a study titled:

Determining the Presence of Periodontopathic Virulence Factors in Short-Term Postmortem Alzheimer’s Disease Brain Tissue

a newspaper will publish a story titled:

Poor dental health and gum disease may cause Alzheimer’s

Without access to the paper, it’s difficult to assess the evidence. I suggest you read Jonathan Eisen’s analysis of the abstract. Essentially, it makes two claims:

• that cultured astrocytes (a type of brain cell) can adsorb and internalize lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from Porphyromonas gingivalis, a bacterium found in the mouth
• that LPS was also detected in brain tissue from 4/10 Alzheimer’s disease (AD) cases, but not in tissue from 10 matched normal brains

Regardless of the biochemistry – which does not sound especially convincing to me^[1] – how about the statistics?