Researchers Identify Virus and Two Types of Bacteria as Major Causes of Alzheimer’s

[natasa778]

A worldwide team of senior scientists and clinicians have come together to produce an editorial which indicates that certain microbes – a specific virus and two specific types of bacteria – are major causes of Alzheimer’s Disease. Their paper, which has been published online in the highly regarded peer-reviewed journal, Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, stresses the urgent need for further research – and more importantly, for clinical trials of anti-microbial and related
...
This major call for action is based on substantial published evidence into Alzheimer’s. The team’s landmark editorial summarises the abundant data implicating these microbes, but until now this work has been largely ignored or dismissed as controversial – despite the absence of evidence to the contrary. Therefore, proposals for the funding of clinical trials have been refused, despite the fact that over 400 unsuccessful clinical trials for Alzheimer’s based on other concepts were carried out over a recent 10-year period.

Opposition to the microbial concepts resembles the fierce resistance to studies some years ago which showed that viruses cause certain types of cancer, and that a bacterium causes stomach ulcers. Those concepts were ultimately proved valid, leading to successful clinical trials and the subsequent development of appropriate treatments.

Professor Douglas Kell of The University of Manchester’s School of Chemistry and Manchester Institute of Biotechnology is one of the editorial’s authors. He says that supposedly sterile red blood cells were seen to contain dormant microbes, which also has implications for blood transfusions. ...

http://neurosciencenews.com/microbes-alzheimers-neurology-3826/

 

[natasa778]

Abstract:


Abstract

Microbes and Alzheimer’s Disease

We are researchers and clinicians working on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or related topics, and we write to express our concern that one particular aspect of the disease has been neglected, even though treatment based on it might slow or arrest AD progression. We refer to the many studies, mainly on humans, implicating specific microbes in the elderly brain, notably herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1), Chlamydia pneumoniae, and several types of spirochaete, in the etiology of AD. Fungal infection of AD brain [5, 6] has also been described, as well as abnormal microbiota in AD patient blood. The first observations of HSV1 in AD brain were reported almost three decades ago]. The ever-increasing number of these studies (now about 100 on HSV1 alone) warrants re-evaluation of the infection and AD concept.

AD is associated with neuronal loss and progressive synaptic dysfunction, accompanied by the deposition of amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide, a cleavage product of the amyloid-β protein precursor (AβPP), and abnormal forms of tau protein, markers that have been used as diagnostic criteria for the disease. These constitute the hallmarks of AD, but whether they are causes of AD or consequences is unknown. We suggest that these are indicators of an infectious etiology. In the case of AD, it is often not realized that microbes can cause chronic as well as acute diseases; that some microbes can remain latent in the body with the potential for reactivation, the effects of which might occur years after initial infection; and that people can be infected but not necessarily affected, such that ‘controls’, even if infected, are asymptomatic

 

[Antares in NYC]

Abstract:
We refer to the many studies, mainly on humans, implicating specific microbes in the elderly brain, notably herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1), Chlamydia pneumoniae, and several types of spirochaete, in the etiology of AD. Fungal infection of AD brain [5, 6] has also been described, as well as abnormal microbiota in AD patient blood.

Amazing.
So when researcher Dr. Alan McDonald found plaques of Borrelia spirochetes in the brains of deceased Alzheimer's patients he was vilified, ridiculed and ultimately ignored. Now, it turns out he found something worth studying.

Funny. Just like when Dr. Alan McDonald found that Borrelia evaded antibiotic treatment by creating biofilm a decade ago, he was laughed at, ridiculed and vilified, and then a new research study by the University of New Haven proved this in-vivo last week.

Time to take this man seriously. Time to stop wasting time, and start looking into chronic infections involved in CFS seriously (HSV, EBV, Borrelia, C-Pneumonia, etc).

@duncan @Valentijn @msf @justy @sarah darwins

 

[sarah darwins]

Funny. Just like when Dr. Alan McDonald found that Borrelia evaded antibiotic treatment by creating biofilm a decade ago, he was laughed at, ridiculed and vilified, and then a new research study by the University of New Haven proved this in-vivo last week.

Time to take this man seriously. Time to stop wasting time, and start looking into chronic infections involved in CFS seriously (HSV, EBV, Borrelia, C-Pneumonia, etc).

Absolutely, Antares. Alan McDonald seems such a good-natured man, which is just as well considering how often he gets lambasted until someone else 'discovers' something he found years before.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Except that this is an editorial that does not indicate anything - it just gives the opinion of a group who got together because they have this opinion. There is no study.

 

[justy]

So when researcher Dr. Alan McDonald found plaques of Borrelia spirochetes in the brains of deceased Alzheimer's patients he was vilified, ridiculed and ultimately ignored. Now, it turns out he found something worth studying.

Funny. Just like when Dr. Alan McDonald found that Borrelia evaded antibiotic treatment by creating biofilm a decade ago, he was laughed at, ridiculed and vilified, and then a new research study by the University of New Haven proved this in-vivo last week

Dr. Alan McDonald will be speaking at a conference in the UK in May, which I will be attending - cant wait to hear what he has to say.

 

[msf]

Except that this is an editorial that does not indicate anything - it just gives the opinion of a group who got together because they have this opinion. There is no study.

Yes, the only remarkable thing about it is that the authors are from the UK!

 

[duncan]

It may be true there is no study, but papers based on literature reviews are not uncommon.

These sorts of articles serve a purpose when it seems the only efforts to replicate come from a dogma-driven group dedicated to disproving everything a researcher has to say.

 

[caledonia]

It would be interesting to see if people who took antibiotics or antivirals for other reasons got improvement in their Alzheimer's.

Like what happened with Rituximab - people took it for cancer and their ME got better.

 

[duncan]

Incidentally, this editorial may not be a study, but one of its authors, Judith Miklossey, has done extensive work, including published studies, on the role of spirochetes in dementia in general, and specifically Alzheimers.

In fact, Drexel University recently published the results of a study that offered further insight into, and support of, this proposed connection - I think in great measure encouraged by work done earlier by Miklossey.

 

[Hip]

A couple of years ago, I decided to contact one of the researchers whose name appears in this present editorial on microbes and Alzheimer’s disease.

I contacted this researcher because I wanted to inform them about Dr William Pridgen's experimental antiviral protocol for treating herpes simplex I infections in fibromyalgia, as I thought this antiviral protocol might be worth trying for HSV-1-associated Alzheimer’s.

This researcher told me that unfortunately it would be almost impossible for their research team to obtain a grant to study the use of antivirals on Alzheimer’s patients, as some influential people in the Alzheimer’s field regard the idea of microbes playing a causal role in the disease as heretical, and these influential scientists block all grant applications for studies on microbial associations to Alzheimer’s. I found that rather shocking.



So it is not just in the field of ME/CFS that the idea of micro-organisms playing a causal role in disease is routinely dismissed by many researchers.

I would like to know whether microbial etiologies of chronic disease are dismissed on scientific and evidential grounds, or merely just on philosophical or ideological grounds.

By "philosophical or ideological" grounds, I mean that researchers just simply do not feel comfortable with the idea that infectious microbes in common circulation can trigger and/or maintain chronic disease. Because accepting such an idea would of necessity lead to a radical re-evaluation of how we understand, prevent and treat chronic disease.

Thus I question whether there some kind of ideological dislike in the minds of many researchers against the idea infectious microbes could play a major role in disease.



Accepting the possibility of a microbial etiology in chronic disease does not of course imply that other etiological avenues should be ignored. For example, POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) often appears after viral infection, and preliminary studies show that POTS may be driven by autoimmunity. Thus these two (tentative) facts suggest that under certain conditions, infection might play a role in triggering and/or maintaining autoimmunity in POTS.

Now, it may well turn out that it's easier and more effective to treat POTS by treating the autoimmunity than by treating the viral infection (not least because medical science does not at present have much in the way of good antivirals). However, it would not seem a good idea to suppress research on the viral angle on POTS, just because the autoimmunity in POTS may be an easier route to treat this disease.

 

[Undisclosed]

A study in 2014 found no correlation by comparing some data.

The 13 states with the highest incidence of Lyme disease reported the lowest number of deaths due to Alzheimer's.

7 of the states with high incidences of Alzheimer’s deaths were among the 13 states with the lowest incidence of Lyme disease.

Vermont was the only state that reported a high incidence of both diseases.

http://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad140552

Abstract
Reports that Lyme disease (LD) causes Alzheimer's disease (AD) have appeared in academic journals and online. If the biological agent Borrelia burgdorferi that causes LD also causes AD, then areas with the highest levels of LD should have significantly higher numbers of deaths due to AD compared to low LD areas. Here we show there is no statistically significant correlation between the incidence of LD and deaths due to AD in the US. Furthermore, the 13 states with the highest deaths due to AD were statistically different (p < 0.0001) from those with high LD incidence.

 

[Hip]

A study in 2014 found no correlation by comparing some data.

The 13 states with the highest incidence of Lyme disease reported the lowest number of deaths due to Alzheimer's.

That's interesting. That looks like good evidence against Borrelia playing a casual role in Alzheimer's.


My understanding, though, is that the main microbial association to Alzheimer's disease is herpes simplex virus 1.

This study for example found that in 90% of Alzheimer's disease brains, the amyloid plaques contained HSV-1 DNA, and 72% of the total HSV-1 DNA in the brain was associated with these plaques.

Whereas in normal aged brains, which contain amyloid plaques at a lower prevalence, 80% of plaques contained HSV-1 DNA, but only 24% of the total HSV-1 DNA in the brain was plaque-associated.

 

[Undisclosed]

That's interesting. That looks like good evidence against Borrelia playing a casual role in Alzheimer's.


My understanding, though, is that the main microbial association to Alzheimer's disease is herpes simplex virus 1. This study for example found that in 90% of Alzheimer's disease brains, the amyloid plaques contained herpes simplex virus type 1 DNA.

That's a difficult one because doesn't the herpes simplex virus type 1 infect a huge proportion of the population -- so to jump to a definite correlation is difficult. If there is an association, then they really need to figure out why some people who carry the virus don't develop Alzheimer's and some do. It's all very interesting and obviously very difficult to figure out.

There is a lot of interesting research out there related to Alzheimer's.

 

[Hip]

That's a difficult one because doesn't the herpes simplex virus type 1 infect a huge proportion of the population -- so to jump to a definite correlation is difficult.

Yes, HSV-1 is found in over 50% of adults.

From the HSV-1 perspective, what seems to be another important factor is whether an individual has the APOE-4 form of the APOE gene (APOE-4 is present in around 20% of the population). This APOE-4 form seems to facilitate HSV-1 to exist in a latent state in the brain. Having APOE-4 is a known risk factor for Alzheimer's.

 

[barbc56]

Here's more information on the study @Kina cited.

https://alzheimersnewstoday.com/201...eory-lyme-disease-alzheimers-disease-linkage/

ETA

I liked this quote.

“Because of this growing impact Alzheimer’s disease will have in Canada and world-wide, we need to understand the true factors that underlie the disease,” Dr. O’Day observes. “We need to quickly rule out concerns, like Lyme disease, that unnecessarily cause widespread fear and interfere with attempts to fully understand the causes of Alzheimer’s disease

.

 

[sarah darwins]

A study in 2014 found no correlation by comparing some data.

The 13 states with the highest incidence of Lyme disease reported the lowest number of deaths due to Alzheimer's.

7 of the states with high incidences of Alzheimer’s deaths were among the 13 states with the lowest incidence of Lyme disease.

Vermont was the only state that reported a high incidence of both diseases.

http://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad140552

It's interesting, but that paper used CDC lyme data from 2002-11, which is prior to the CDC's 10-fold upward revision of its figures for lyme disease, and before massively revising its geographical data for the incidence of lyme-bearing ticks across the USA.

Given the very big question marks against the CDC data for lyme, I'm not sure the study has value.

 

[Undisclosed]

Here's more information on the study @Kina cited.

https://alzheimersnewstoday.com/201...eory-lyme-disease-alzheimers-disease-linkage/

ETA

I liked this quote.

“Because of this growing impact Alzheimer’s disease will have in Canada and world-wide, we need to understand the true factors that underlie the disease,” Dr. O’Day observes. “We need to quickly rule out concerns, like Lyme disease, that unnecessarily cause widespread fear and interfere with attempts to fully understand the causes of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Infection with borrelia does not make sense as a cause at all to me.

Can borrelia selectively cause infection in just the brain. I have worked with many Alzheimer patients who were very very healthy prior to develop AD. Those who are infected with borrelia and left untreated develop neurological symptoms -- cognitive impairment, delerium, etc -- as well as arthritis, cardiac issues and a multitude of other physical symptoms.

I realize there have been research papers that have suggested that infection with the bacteria can induce the production of amyloid beta and Tau proteins that are associated with Alzheimer's disease. This has only been shown in tissue cell cultures and not specifically seen in the human brain.

Given the very big question marks against the CDC data for lyme, I'm not sure the study has value.

It probably has more value than a literature review.

 

[BurnA]

This researcher told me that unfortunately it would be almost impossible for their research team to obtain a grant to study the use of antivirals on Alzheimer’s patients, as some influential people in the Alzheimer’s field regard the idea of microbes playing a causal role in the disease as heretical, and these influential scientists block all grant applications for studies on microbial associations to Alzheimer’s. I found that rather shocking.

I find the above statment too unbelievable or too insignificant.

The impression I get is that the large multinational pharma companies are pumping millions if not billions into Alzheimer's.

Whoever gets there first is in for some very rich rewards.
Do you think they wouldn't consider every possibility ?

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

It's almost impossible to get a grant for anything different - I should know. But you don't go around moaning about it. You get the needed data to prove your point. The abstract here on infections wouldn't encourage me to get out of my armchair, let alone root for them at an advisory board.