47⬅ Donald Trump: An Op-Ed on Systemic Amyloidosis

This Op-ed will help new visitors understand what is happening and how we got here with President Trump.
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Every physician does it. We notice an unusual feature in a person on the street and think of an illness. Yellow-tinged eyes? Liver disease, possibly. A tremor while resting? Parkinsonism, perhaps.

A fast-food loving, overweight 80 year-old office-worker with marked fluid accumulation in the ankles and face, two chronically bruised hands, daytime drowsiness, chronic anemia, taking no blood pressure medicines but with a decreasing blood pressure, pristine past pressures, and an ultrasound showing the heart squeezes well? Systemic amyloidosis, probably.

This is Donald Trump. Amyloidosis is a build-up of abnormally behaving proteins in tissues and organs — notably the heart — slowly impairing them.

But let's be clear. I am *not* diagnosing President Trump with amyloidosis. Only two medical tests can definitively do that, and there is no public record the president ever had either of them.

What I am saying is: any cardiologist who sees a patient with the findings listed above is likely to think, "Hmmm, this could be amyloidosis" — and order the definitive test. In other words, the cardiologist has a *suspicion* and acts to determine if the suspicion is correct or incorrect.

That's where I sit with President Trump today. Amyloidosis is a single disease that could cause all nine of the listed findings — especially concerning because most of those clues come directly from the May 2026 medical report issued by the president's physician. A detective with nine clues all pointing to the same bad guy has a prime suspect. It's time to put that amyloidosis suspect on trial.

Does amyloidosis have any alibis? Absolutely. The president's physician has said aspirin plus handshaking caused the hand bruises and that leg-vein abnormalities caused the swollen ankles. But the alibis don't explain the bruises on the president's non-shaking left hand nor the swelling of his face. And the alibis are two explanations for two clues, whereas amyloidosis is one explanation for all nine.

Has the president's physician considered amyloidosis? I take it on faith that one of his 22 specialty consultants has. But a strict reading of the May 2026 report suggests the opposite.

A normal urinalysis would be evidence against amyloidosis. The report omitted it. A normal 12-lead electrocardiogram ("EKG") would be evidence against amyloidosis. Omitted. A normal exercise tolerance test would be evidence against amyloidosis. Omitted. An identified cause for the anemia would be evidence against amyloidosis. Omitted. Normal thickness and stiffness of the heart's walls, plus normal pressures inside the heart would be major evidence against amyloidosis. All omitted, in favor of a seemingly evasive three-word statement about the normality of a cardiac ultrasound test performed at an unclear date.

In a similar dance, the president's physician said in July 2025 and never again that he found no signs of heart failure (wrong: he found swollen legs), but later he must have had doubts because he then performed angiograms of both the heart and lungs and considered doing a cardiac MRI... which is a test for cardiac amyloidosis, among other things.

In short, virtually all the opportunities to say the president does NOT have amyloidosis are silent. Why? This may be the tenth amyloidosis clue.

And that's more than enough. By any reasonable measure, the suspicion for amyloidosis is credible and strong. It justifies performing one or both of the definitive tests that can settle the suspicion: a biopsy stained with a particular red dye, or a "TcPYP" cardiac scan. At this point, any other test would be inconclusive.

Why should we care? Past a certain stage, amyloidosis, especially its heart failure, robs people of energy, stamina, physical resilience, well-being, and the ability to concentrate — all desirable qualities in a president, all affecting governance. Approved treatments leave much to be desired. The disease is progressive and shortens life.

Thus, the president and his physician should level with us (and with the vice president). They should tell us why they think the president does NOT have systemic amyloidosis, specifically disclosing what the definitive tests say, rather than rehashing other tests. Vagueness, bluster, privacy claims, silence, or other evasions would be unnecessary with a negative test and immediately suggest a positive test was obtained.

Again, this is a suspicion, not a diagnosis. It could all be wrong. In the best case, the president — who is a human being with a family — tells us that a definitive test shows he is free from amyloidosis, and in the process creates an important and admirable precedent for openness about presidential health, while also sparing himself from a dread ending that should be wished upon no one.

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The author is a cardiologist, retired US Air Force colonel, and author of an academic book on bedside diagnosis.

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