“Infectious Theory of Alzheimer’s Disease Draws Fresh Interest”

My grandma, a dentist from Taiwan who immigrated to the United States to start a new life with her new family, was the ultimate tiger mom. She carried that parenting style over to her grandchildren and was consequently very austere towards my siblings and I. We were held to high expectations and never got away with mischief. However, about two years ago, she began changing. She’d forget what she’d just said, directions to get home, and eventually, even our names. Sure, the dementia generally made her nicer as well, and we could now get away with just about anything, but it was more so just saddening to see such a sharp mind deteriorate in the way. Since the start of her decline, I’ve been very interested in dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.

Research on Alzheimer’s, both general and obscure, has been been conducted for decades. The more obscure research is on the ‘germ theory’ of Alzheimer’s. Recently, Dr. Leslie Norins noticed how many characteristics of Alzheimer’s were similar to those of infectious processes. She also noticed interesting patterns such as the fact that neurosurgeons are seven times more likely to die from Alzheimer’s and spouses of those with Alzheimer’s are at six times the risk of falling ill to Alzheimer’s. It seemed like some bug was involved.

Another researcher, genetics professor at Mount Sinai, Joel Dudley, hypothesizes that two strains of human herpes virus that can lie dormant in the human body for years, HHV-6 and HHV-7, seem to interact with the genes known to increase Alzheimer’s. An overaccumulation of a protein called amyloid, recently discovered to be lethal to viruses, has been suspected to attribute to Alzheimer’s. Thus, the idea is that our ancient immune systems learned to ramp up amyloid levels in order to fight of chronic viral infections such as herpes.

If these scientists are really onto something, this new information could blaze a new trail for the understanding and treatment of Alzheimer’s.

See full article here: https://www.contagionlive.com/news/investigators-uncover-a-new-approach-to-target-herpesviruses

- Isabella Duan