Herpes Simplex Infection Correlates with Amyloid Burden in the Aging Brain

There is a continuing debate over the degree to which Alzheimer's is driven by persistent infection in brain tissue, such as by varieties of herpesvirus. Amyloid-β is an antimicrobial peptide, a part of the innate immune response, and one could argue that persistently raised expression of amyloid-β will increase misfolding and generation of the aggregates that drive pathology in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, at least under the amyloid cascade hypothesis. The data is not all convincing, however, which suggests that perhaps there are other factors involved - that multiple viruses interact in some people, for example, or a pathological interaction between viral infection and some other aspect of brain aging only occurs in some people. It remains to be seen as to where this line of research will lead, but even now it seems a good cost-benefit decision to be using antiviral drugs in later life. Mounting data suggests that herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) is involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), possibly instigating amyloid-beta (Aβ) accumulation decades before the onset of clinical symptoms. However, human in vivo evidence linking HSV-1 infection to AD pathology is lacking in normal aging. To shed light into this question, serum anti-HSV IgG levels were correlated with measures of Aβ deposits and blood markers of neurodegeneration in cognitively normal older adults. Additionally, we investigated whether associations between anti-HSV I...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs