Microbial Contributions to Alzheimer's Disease

There are a lot of papers on Alzheimer's disease that fall outside the mainstream focus on the formation of amyloid in the brain. This is perhaps in part a consequence of the challenges and delays that have beset efforts to produce practical treatments based on the amyloid view of the progression of Alzheimer's. As soon as any consensus in medical research and development fails to keep up its momentum, there are factions nibbling at its heels and trying out other ideas. The past few decades of the broader field of medical science are littered with promising approaches discarded in favor of others in the course of a few short years. Some of the alternative views of Alzheimer's disease are far out on the fringes, while others explore plausible contributions to the disease process wherein any debate must start with "yes, but is this a meaningful effect in comparison to others?" or "perhaps, but this is happening a long way in to the chain of consequences and dysfunction." Here is an outline of an interesting view on the contribution of microbial populations to the progression of Alzheimer's disease, both the symbiotic gut microbiota that are considered to influence aging to some degree, and the impact of a lifetime of exposure to hostile pathogens. These may turn out to be proxies for the state of the immune system or metabolic dysfunction due to obesity and old age, both of which are important in the progression of degenerative aging. It makes for interesting reading, but it i...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs