Viral Infection in Middle Age Correlates with Later Dementia Risk

A range of evidence suggests that persistent viral infection contributes to the risk of suffering neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. This may be due to mechanisms relating to amyloid-β accumulation, in its role as an anti-microbial peptide, a part of the innate immune system. It may have more to do with lasting chronic inflammation subsequent to infection. Researchers here note another addition to the epidemiological data on this topic, in this case linking severe infections requiring hospitalization with later dementia risk. The effect sizes here are large and last for a long time following infection, but one might wonder how much of this relates to the degree of age-related immune dysfunction and other impacts of aging that lead from infection to hospitalization versus being able to work through it with clinical visits and over the counter medication only. Previous research suggested infection with HSV increases a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). Likewise, someone who caught Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which causes mononucleosis, is a whopping 32-fold more likely to develop multiple sclerosis (MS). Now, researchers have analyzed medical records from 344,000 people from the Finnish nationwide biobank, FinnGen, and 106,000 in the U.K. Biobank. All participants were of European ancestry and older than 60 at baseline. About 405,500 were healthy, while 44,500 had been diagnosed with an NDD: 11,650 with AD, 2,750 with vascular d...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs