Alzheimer's risk 10 times lower with herpes

medication
Published Sunday 15 July 2018
By Ana Sandoiu
Fact checked by Jasmin Collier

New results could change the face of Alzheimer's treatment; the herpes simplex
virus is found to play a vital role in the condition, and antiherpetic medication is
shown to have a dramatic effect on dementia risk.

Alzheimer's disease may soon be treated with antiviral medication.

Last month, Medical News Today reported on a study that found "strong evidence"
that viruses are involved in Alzheimer's disease.
The postmortem analyses of brain tissue found that people who lived with this
dementia type also had more herpesviruses 6 and 7 than people without
Alzheimer's.

Now, a scientific commentary suggests that the study that MNT covered is not the
only one to pinpoint a link between herpes and dementia.
In fact, three more studies have strengthened this link, and the commentary —
recently published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease – takes a look at all three.
Ruth Itzhaki, who is a professor of neuroscience and experimental psychology at the
University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, alongside Richard Lathe, who is a
professor in the Division of Infection and Pathway Medicine at the University of
Edinburgh, also in the U.K., authored the commentary.

'Remarkable magnitude of antiviral effect'

The studies referenced in the commentary are two articles (Tsai et al., 2017, and
Chen et al., 2018) that suggest that acute herpes zoster infection puts people at a
higher risk of dementia, and one article that shows that aggressive treatment with
antiherpetic medication drastically lowers dementia risk.
The latter study — deemed "most important" by Profs. Itzhaki and Lathe —
examined 8,362 people aged 50 and above who received a diagnosis of herpes
simplex virus (HSV) infection, as well as a control group of 25,086 age-matched
healthy people.
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The two groups were followed for almost a decade, between 2001 and 2010. In the
herpes group, the risk of dementia was over 2.5 times higher than in the control
group.

Significantly, the study also revealed that aggressive antiviral treatment reduced the
relative risk of dementia by 10 times.
Prof. Lathe comments on these new findings, saying, "Not only is the magnitude of
the antiviral effect remarkable, but also the fact that — despite the relatively brief
duration and the timing of treatment — in most patients severely affected by HSV1 it
appeared to prevent the long-term damage in [the] brain that results in Alzheimer's."