10 ms·

Alzheimer's risk 10 times lower with herpes medication

340 points by subcosmos 8y ago

avaku 8y ago
Ok, which medication?
subcosmos 8y ago
Right on the heals of the recent publication that shows that beta-amyloid in the brain specifically wraps around HerpesViral particles in order to prevent them from spreading! https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(18)30526-9 https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(18)30526-9 Turns out, a great many viruses use low-density-lipoproteins (LDLs, of heart disease fame) to travel around the body, and some even enter our cells by binding to LDL receptors. The APOE gene, associated with alzheimers, binds and transports herpes in the brain and hepatitis viruses in the liver! https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-messenger-a3f5dfeba09 https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-me...
- api 8y ago
  Umm... sooo... Alzheimers might be viral? Or is it just common mechanisms that might be at work?
  - Shank 8y ago
    After reading a bit about it, I think the hypothesis is more that Alzheimer’s is the side effect of the body’s own anti-viral systems acting to contain viruses in the brain. Most of the latest studies are showing a reduction in Alzheimer’s risk after treating patients who have some form of herpes with anti-viral medication.
    - Beefin 8y ago
      Correct, as humans evolved, parasitic infections increased. The APOE gene was a method of slowing down or stopping parastic infection to the brain. "Among the Tsimane as a whole, adults with APOE4 got poorer scores in these tests. But when the team focused on the people with high parasite levels, they saw that the APOE4 carriers had better mental skills, even outperforming APOE3 carriers who were parasite-free." https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/why-does-a-gene-that-increases-alzheimers-risk-still-exist/512396/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/why-does...
      - subcosmos 8y ago
        No.... APOE is a lipoprotein that transports cholesterol, and viruses jump onto it to get into cells. Amyloid-Beta is what seems to be wrapping around the virus particles to block their transit.
  - subcosmos 8y ago
    Heart disease might be partly viral as well! Evidence going back to the 80's shows this.
    - scentoni 8y ago
      https://www.webmd.com/oral-health/features/healthy-teeth-healthy-heart https://www.webmd.com/oral-health/features/healthy-teeth-hea...
  - tyu100 8y ago
    No. The beta amyloid protein is the primary 'cause' of Alzheimer's. It builds up in the brain and kills neurons and synapses. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent developing drugs to reduce the amount of amyloid in the brain to try and combat Alzheimer's, none of which has led to an effective treatment. This newer theory is that the cause of the amyloid build-up is an immune response to the herpes virus increasingly infiltrating the brain (as you get older the blood/brain barrier that protects your brain from infections weakens) so a possible treatment is to try and reduce the levels of herpes infection rather than attacking the amyloid protein which is your body's immune response to the herpes infection. The APOE4 gene is infamous for increasing amyloid production and being a major risk factor for early-onset Alzheimers and so carriers of the gene are often used in studies to see the effect of treatments. (@subcosmos below has a good explanation of what this gene actually does)
    - subcosmos 8y ago
      The thing about viral infections of the nervous system is that you don't even need to consider the blood brain barrier. Viruses travel backwards through neurons by hijacking microtubule transport networks, and many groups have hypothesized in the literature that it could be getting into the brain by simply infecting a peripheral nerve and traveling up the spinal chord.
      - dnautics 8y ago
        > Viruses travel backwards through neurons by hijacking microtubule transport networks, How does this help crossing the BBB? Can you give a citation?
        subcosmos 8y ago
        Check out Figure 1 in this paper. The model effectively is that HSV infects a great many people in early life, and becomes latent in neurons until old age. Then it suddenly wakes up again and travels to the brain. All it takes is an infected muscle or other tissue, allowing the virus to get into the nerve. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3546524/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3546524/ Some VERY notable statistics mentioned in the paper : "Such studies have revealed endemic infection rates of 31% in children aged 6–14, rising to 49% in adults aged 14–49, and to a high of 80–90% in the population over 65. In one study of 40 autopsied TGs, HSV-1 sequences were amplified from DNA or RNA extracted from 81% of TGs from demented subjects, and 74% of controls" I blogged about these connections here, for I think that this retrograde transport phenomenon might explain Tau phosphorylation, which is a secondary hallmark of Alzheimer's and other dementias : https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-messenger-a3f5dfeba09 https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-me...
- tyu100 8y ago
  Great links, thank you.
- sctb 8y ago
  Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17521994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17521994.
- msla 8y ago
  > Right on the heals Freudian autocorrect error!
  - subcosmos 8y ago
    Hah! I've spent the last several years studying dementia at UCSF actually, and I'm well known in the building for compulsively making puns CONSTANTLY... I once told my boss, who studies sociopaths, that I have "sociopuny" ... and she facepalmed harder than you can imagine .... This one wasn't intentional. I have a problem.
    - sogen 8y ago
      I'd love to meet you next time I am in SF :D
    - sitkack 8y ago
      http://punslam.com/ http://punslam.com/
      - subcosmos 8y ago
        Ah man, everyone keeps insisting that I compete in this. Mind you, I'm not legally allowed to deploy my puns within city limits. EDIT: from the downvote, it seems that I've already been PUNished ... Do... your ... worst HN!
- aaavl2821 8y ago
  Very informative and thought provoking post If I understand correctly, APOE helps viruses enter neurons. How does APOE4 behave differently than other isoforms in this regard? APOE itself isn't implicated in AD risk, just the APOE4 isoform. And I couldn't tell from your post or a brief lit search, what's the current thinking on the relationship btw APOE and amyloid beta? I think APOE4 is associated with higher levels of beta amyloid but I don't know why. You mention a study showing beta amyloid traps herpes simplex? Is there a mechanism by which APOE4 drives more beta amyloid aggregation to fight viral infections, but as an unintended result leads to AD? I've briefly followed some of the recent papers on a viral link to AD but haven't spent much time on it, your post has inspired me to do some more research!
  - subcosmos 8y ago
    Here are a few major points : * APO-E isoform, that predicts alzheimers risk, correlates with how much beta amyloid is present in the brain * It also correlates with how much Herpes Virus is present : https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/herpes-viruses-alzheimers/564887/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/herpes-v... "Readhead and his colleagues have shown that the more E4 copies someone has, the more HHV–6A and HHV–6B viruses they are likely to have in their brains." * We also know that if you knock APOE out in a mouse, and then infect it, there is WAY less HSV penetration in the brain (see figure 1, and note that the Y-axis is logarithmic!) : http://jvi.asm.org/content/76/23/12394.full http://jvi.asm.org/content/76/23/12394.full * Also, APOE isoforms predict whether or not Hepatitis B virus will give you liver cancer. Note that its the E3 genotype that is risky for this, yet its the E4 genotype thats bad for Alzheimers. I take this to be evidence that hepatitis viruses and herpes viruses likely have different binding affinities to these two isoforms. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26823800 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26823800 * Someone should do some drug screening to eliminate binding between known viral capsids and APOE variants. cough YC Bio
    - aaavl2821 8y ago
      Seems like there is still a lot to learn about the underlying biology, though very provocative findings thus far. I may be misunderstanding but I'd think that if beta amyloid traps herpes, then higher levels of beta amyloid would correlate with lower levels of virus, but it seems that isn't the case? Would antiviral therapy be more effective that blocking capsid-APOE interaction? It's my understanding that blocking protein protein interactions is challenging, although inhibiting that interaction would be a nice specific way to block the mechanism
- dghughes 8y ago
  And the HPV vaccine used to cure the malignant skin cancer on a 97 year-old woman recently.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    It should be noted that cervical cancer is of the same type as that woman’s skin cancer that was cured with direct tumor injections of Gardasil9. Further high signal discussion on Reddit that goes into more depth: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/8z1lg0/hpv_vaccine_eliminates_skin_cancer_in_97yearold/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/8z1lg0/hpv_vaccine...
dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
I tried to visit the website and a pop-up appeared trying to get my consent re. tracking. Since I didn't agree, the website denied access displaying this page: https://anon.healthline.com/ https://anon.healthline.com/ I believe NPR also uses the same tactics. How is this legal under GDPR? In any case, I just disabled JS and read the article as usual. Moreover, I realized the web (the document part, not the apps part) is actually so much better without JS. Honestly, whenever JS is being used, it's almost exclusively against the user, not to help them. This is from someone who is coding in JS for a living.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  The argument is that they need to do this particular tracking in order to make their website work. I believe this is against the GDPR, but need to make a complaint against them. Arguments why it is against the GDPR, if you can display the text to a googlebot and you will do no change to the structure of the document that is the main purpose of coming to the site then it is not GDPR compliant to deny someone access to the resource based on the argument that they need to do tracking to make the particular resource work. In other words they are quite clearly lying and should be fined. There should be some general make GDPR complaint tool where people can go, say where they are from, write what site complaining about, and it shows you similar complaints for you to add yourself to, or to send a new complaint. Then it packs them off to the relevant organizations to handle the complaint. Probably someone has already made this tool but I don't know about it.
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    Maybe we should just change the browser referrer to googlebot's one
- volkl48 8y ago
  Domain registration is American. I doubt they seriously care about GDPR compliance and would just ignore any EU court filings.
  - peteretep 8y ago
im3w1l 8y ago
Apparently the virus in question is very common, most kids have it. So it could be that Alzheimers indicates some immunodeficiency and that herpes medication compensates for it. Edit: I must have gotten confused. I was thinking they talked about HHV6/7 as I saw another discussion about that recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17366591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17366591 From another source: "Nearly 100% of humans are exposed to HHV-6 by the age of three" Edit 2: Although HSV 1 is also apparently very common in adults. 2 out of 3 have it.
- eganist 8y ago
  There are other threads of research specifically pointing to HSV + ApoE4: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=hsv1+apoe4 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=hsv1+apoe4 Results aren't consistent, but I would be surprised if the latest round of texts didn't spur further examination.
- kulu2002 8y ago
  HHV-3 is also one of the 8 herpesviruses which seems to be common among children, teens, and young adults causing chickenpox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicella_zoster_virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicella_zoster_virus
eganist 8y ago
I remember asking whether the HSV1/Alz link was a fringe theory based on the lack of popular discussion around it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446016). As someone at hopefully an early enough age who hasn't had any (known? -- since there's never any certainty with it) outbreaks, I'm wondering whether getting such a prescription based on family history at this point would be well advised. It'd also be neat exploring the side effects and seeing if that's a worthy trade, but it sounds like it probably is. Biohacking is fun.
- idbehold 8y ago
  23andMe says my risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease during my lifetime is 5.59x the average. There are few side effects that would make me hesitate to try something like this to essentially reduce my risk back to average.
  - eganist 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aciclovir#Systemic_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aciclovir#Systemic_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valaciclovir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valaciclovir The less frequent side effects of aciclovir raw are interesting. Likewise for the prodrug valaciclovir (Valtrex). Some of these sound like they're a result of some level of impact on brain function. I can't help but wonder if there's any relation. But you're right. The adverse effects here don't seem like much of a deterrent in the face of elevated risk.
  - ataturk 8y ago
    Couple things: First, 23andMe is not medical advice and I don't know how they get away with supplying such advice. Second, all medications incur risk to your body, so taking something like a Herpes medication for years in the hope that it might prevent Alzheimer's is a bit insane. A doctor needs to prescribe it (in the US, anyways) so you would have to have their approval anyways. My mother has dementia, so this issue hits home for me, btw. But I don't see myself taking some medication in order to try and prevent something I may never end up getting. Herpes medications are not vitamins, if you get what I mean.
Angostura 8y ago
I'm a mathematical illiterate (no really, and I'm not proud). The headline hurts my head - does "risk 10 times lower" mean that there is one 10th of the risk? so a 1 in 10 chance becomes 1 in 100?
- ggm 8y ago
  Yes, this is exactly the kind of question I wanted to ask, but was to embarrassed to ask. Thank you! (also suffering from functional maths illiteracy, although I suspect mathematicians would say functional arithmetic illiteracy)
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > does "risk 10 times lower" mean that there is one 10th of the risk? so a 1 in 10 chance becomes 1 in 100? There’s no way to tell from reading the article, you’d need to read the paper. From the article it’s not clear whether it’s the 2.5x increased risk that’s decreased to 1.25x, or whether people on antiviral meds had a lower risk than the control group (0.25x).
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- Protostome 8y ago
  The way I understand it - let's say in a control group 1 in 100 got the disease in a predetermined period of time, 10 times lower risk means that in the group that got the treatment 1 out of 1000 people contracted the disease...
- notpeter 8y ago
  From the abstract: "These authors report that infection with a different herpes virus, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1), leads to a similarly increased risk of later developing SD [Senile Dementia]. Further, when the authors looked at patients treated aggressively with antiherpetic medications at the time, the relative risk of SD was reduced by a factor of 10. [...] antiherpetic medication prevented later SD development in 90% of their study group" So yes. Source: https://sci-hub.tw/10.3233/jad-180266# https://sci-hub.tw/10.3233/jad-180266#
jk27277 8y ago
Interesting. Afaik Indians have a very low Alzheimer risk supposely because of curcurma. My friend claimed curcuma also mildens Alzheimer syndromes. This made me Google if curcuma helps against herpes. It does! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668156/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668156/
- jorvi 8y ago
  Normal curcuma (aka tumeric) only contains about 2.5% of the actual beneficial compound curcumin. But curcumin is indeed amazing, not only does it help with Alzheimer’s, it also has anti-tumor, blood sugar regulating and fat controlling properties.
  - corysama 8y ago
    I saw a rando blog article out there about an old paper studying the components of tumeric. They found it had lots of components each with separate benefits. Unfortunately, the conclusion of the paper was “We should separate all the components so that we can market and sell the same tumeric 10 times!” Obligatory mention of how piperine (black pepper extract) is necessary for bioavailability.
    - reducesuffering 8y ago
      Black pepper is not necessary. There are extracted forms with patented formulas that have studies showing possibly increased effectiveness compared to black pepper. Theracurmin and Longvida
- JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
  Curcumin is one of those compounds that does everything, that's not necessarily a good thing, it is a hit in every assay. When you google compounds and they are antifungal, antidiabetic, antibacterial, anticancer, etc., it isn't a reason to get excited, they have no specificity. Source: I work in natural products chemistry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-assay_interference_compounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-assay_interference_compoun... http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/01/12/curcumin-will-waste-your-time http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/01/12/cur...
bitL 8y ago
Is there any link between high heat and herpes? There was some sauna study showing that people often doing sauna had significantly lower risk of Alzheimer. Maybe herpes is flushed out by excessive heat and sweating or rendered inefficient, even beyond blood-brain barrier?
- akuji1993 8y ago
  Hm, now I'm interested if people in warmer countries / continents suffer less from Alzheimer's.
- blackkettle 8y ago
  Just a random guess, but I would hazard that it's not the heat. Going in a properly hot sauna and 'soaking' for 15min or more gets you really sweating, and increases your heart rate. Basically it 'gets your blood pumping', and _probably_ produces an activity profile not too different from mild exercise; and regular exercise has also been shown to consistently lower risk.
  - amelius 8y ago
    Could be, but I'd guess this works at the molecular level, with a set of genes that is turned on/off in hot environments and producing some kind of desired mechanism.
credit_guy 8y ago
Clickbait. The actual finding appears to be this: if you are diagnosed with HSV (herpes simplex virus), your risk of dementia is 2.5 times higher. If however, you get an aggressive antiviral treatment, then the risk is reduced by a factor of 10. I take this to mean that overall, the risk do develop dementia is 2.5/10 = 0.25 times the base risk, so overall, the Alzheimer's risk is only 4 times lower with herpes medication, when compared with the general population. The relevant quotes from the article: "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."
- carlmr 8y ago
  >I take this to mean that overall, the risk do develop dementia is 2.5/10 = 0.25 times the base risk, so overall, the Alzheimer's risk is only 4 times lower with herpes medication, when compared with the general population. Looking at Wikipedia "According to the World Health Organization 67% of the world population under the age of 50 have HSV-1." and according to the source there 11% have HSV-2. There's probably some good amount of overlap between the two, but we have somewhere between 67 and 78% of the population with some form of herpes. In any case the "general population" is closer to having herpes than not having herpes, so we'd probably arrive at a factor somewhere closer to the 10x.
  - credit_guy 8y ago
    In most cases that HSV-1 or HSV-2 is dormant, and the person is considered healthy. In this study, the people diagnosed with HSV were considered sick, and in some cases there was a need for the so-called "aggressive antiviral therapy". Now, the study seems quite well conducted, there was a large enough group of people diagnosed with HSV (about 8k people) and a control group of about 25k people who were aged-matched with the first group, but healthy. The two group were followed for 9 years. The main conclusion of the group, that the people with HSV were 2.5 times more likely to develop dementia appears sound, and the power of the experiment probably many times higher than the one necessary to determine statistical significance. The secondary conclusion, that the people "aggressively treated with antivirals" is not as strong, in my opinion. First of all, it's not clear how many in the primary group were subject to that treatment. In an extreme scenario, maybe we are talking only about 50-100, in which case, we may end up with an intended or unintended case of p-hacking. Second, the researchers may have looked for hundreds of things, like how more prone to Alzheimer people who drank more alcohol were, or people who watched too much TV, or other hypotheses. And we may end up again with p-hacking (like in the acne-causing-green-jelly-beans xkcd [1]). [1] https://www.xkcd.com/882/ https://www.xkcd.com/882/
echelon 8y ago
These developments are seriously exciting, and I can't wait for there to be more studies done! If viral links turn out to be causal, then perhaps we have a path towards a cure. I wonder if there could be a link between HSV and the development of ADHD in early childhood. Or perhaps other mental dysfunction?
- echelon 8y ago
  (Too late to edit my own post.) Furthermore, I wanted to add that there are a lot of studies that indicate lack of sleep as a risk factor for Alzheimer's. Lack of sleep is also one of the biggest causes of HSV reactivation and outbreak. I'd be interested in knowing if Lysine supplements have similar effect to acyclovir. The amino acid has a well studied suppressive effect [1, 2]. I'm going to email some of these authors to inquire. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/6262023/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/6262023/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/640102/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/640102/
aaron695 8y ago
Title is wrong (AFAICS) There's no evidence if you don't have HSV the meds help. If you have HSV and you take the meds, your risk of Alzheimer's is still more than people without HSV. The "added" risk is 90% lower though than those who don't take the meds and have HSV. DOI: 10.3233/JAD-180266 DOI: 10.1007/s13311-018-0611-x (Original study) (The really interesting thing is "These articles provide the first population evidence for a causal link between herpes virus infection and senile dementia." --- dementia might be from viruses)
known 8y ago
Alzheimer's occurs due to a build-up of sticky proteins in the brain called amyloid plaques; And Scientists claim herpes, chlamydia and other infections could be responsible for Alzheimer; https://www.netdoctor.co.uk/healthy-living/wellbeing/news/a26239/could-the-cold-sore-virus-cause-dementia/ https://www.netdoctor.co.uk/healthy-living/wellbeing/news/a2...
- noetic_techy 8y ago
  The amyloid beta theory is likely completely wrong. All drug trails so far have failed: https://www.insidescience.org/news/Alzheimer%27s-Drug-Trials-Keep-Failing https://www.insidescience.org/news/Alzheimer%27s-Drug-Trials...
  - woodandsteel 8y ago
    But what this article seems to be indicating is that the drugs need to target the HSV that the amyloid beta is wrapped around, not the amyloid beta itself.
    - subcosmos 8y ago
      Yup! And that targeting the beta-amyloid is a bad idea since it just allows the virus to propagate again.
noetic_techy 8y ago
I'll add another link to the mix. Looks like all the drugs based solely on the amyloid beta hypothesis have all failed: https://www.insidescience.org/news/Alzheimer%27s-Drug-Trials-Keep-Failing https://www.insidescience.org/news/Alzheimer%27s-Drug-Trials...
peacetreefrog 8y ago
Did the people with the anti-virals take them immediately and upon getting infected? Or did they just have to take them at some point post-infection? Couldn't really tell from the article/not sure how the biology works.
- kaycebasques 8y ago
  It’s not clear to me, either. Here’s my interpretation, based off the abstract: > These authors report that infection with a different herpes virus, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1), leads to a similarly increased risk of later developing SD. Further, when the authors looked at patients treated aggressively with antiherpetic medications at the time, the relative risk of SD was reduced by a factor of 10. It should be stressed that no investigations were made on subjects already suffering from SD, and that those treated were the few rare cases severely affected by HSV. Nonetheless, antiherpetic medication prevented later SD development in 90% of their study group. https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad180266 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-... And the article: > 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. Within the HSV1 population, a small amount happened to get aggressive treatment at some point. It’s not clear whether they got treatment at any point in their life, or if they got treatment after the study began (meaning they got treatment at age 50 or later). This minority happened to have much less chance of Alzheimer’s later on in life. In regards to the timing of the treatment, my guess is that they got treated upon outbreak, since it said that they were severely affected. They would get treatment when they were in the most pain or discomfort. It sounds like only a small minority of the 8K people in the HSV group got treatment.
kaycebasques 8y ago
A few loosely related thoughts: Background: HSV1 is commonly known as cold sores. Some people get them in their mouth, or on their lips. Most of the population don't develop any symptoms. This link between HSV1 and Alzheimer's could be big business. The numbers are wildly divergent, but it sounds like a sizable chunk of the US population has HSV1. I've seen estimates from 20% to 80%. Even if it's the very conservative 20% number, that's still a big market. The skeptic in me (his name is David) is suspicious of this article precisely because it has the potential to be such a big market. Case in point, there's a link to some HSV1 medicine at the bottom of the article. I wonder if they have an affiliate marketing arrangement with the makers of acyclovir. Tangentially related, I think that this article is on the front page of HN precisely because HSV1 is so widespread. For example, if another article discussed a cure for Alzheimer's, but that article involved some rare condition that does not affect the general population, would that article hit page #1? With that said, I think our society's lax approach to HSV1 is bizarre. In Sex Ed, I didn't get any education around the fact that kissing people and sharing drinks can spread a virus. After reading quite a few articles on the virus, I got the impression that STD researchers don't really know much about it. I could be wildly incorrect about that last point, I'm not a medical expert. It's just the general impression I got when trying to understand HSV1 from an STD perspective. For example, it's been common wisdom for a long time that, if you have HSV1 (cold sores), then you can't get HSV2 (genital herpes). But the reality seems to be more ambiguous than that. Apparently there was a fairly recent study mentioning that college students who have HSV1 performed oral sex on their partners and transferred HSV1 to the partner's genitals. Or something like that. Long story short, although I'm skeptical of the business incentives around associating HSV1 with something as scary as Alzheimer's, I welcome more research around understanding HSV1.
- subcosmos 8y ago
  I'm the poster. I posted it because I wanted to get some of my dot-connecting noticed more (https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-messenger-a3f5dfeba09 https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-me...), but links to "viral" news content is more click-worthy than the "Show HN" section. As a scientist I've slowly learned hard lessons about how to hook people, and I'm terrible at it. I don't profit from spreading these ideas. I'm just one of the head data scientists at one of the top dementia labs and I'm tired of longevity-based research taking so friggin long. I also have zero desire to spend a year writing this up only to pay some scientific journal top-dollar so they can paywall it. Putting it up on Medium hopefully saves more lives faster. I guess I took inspiration from the viruses and snuck my medium post on an innocuous buzz article that is exploding on social media now. Sorry not sorry :p
fauigerzigerk 8y ago
I think it's worth noting that the herpes simplex patients were seeking treatment for severe symptoms and were diagnosed using an antibody test. That seems very unusual. It wouldn't occur to me to see a doctor over a cold sore and if I did my GP would probably laugh me out of the office. So maybe (here's me grasping at straws) these people had herpes of a severity completely unlike the millions that buy cold sore cream at the supermarket. Or they had symptoms for the very first time, which would be extremely unsual as well considering they were all over 50. None of that takes away from the surprising effect of the anti-viral treatment on Alzheimer's, but I think the size of the effect may be related to the unusual severity of these particular herpes outbreaks.
- subcosmos 8y ago
  Antibody tests aren't unusual at all. In terms of why they were tested, some of the articles in the press lately seem to indicate that its in response to a shingles infection. Thats when the chickenpox virus (a herpesvirus) becomes reactivated later in life and specifically infects a nerve. We all get exposed to chickenpox and most of us are latently harboring it. I wish I understood all of the herpes isoforms better.
  - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
    I'm talking about the third study included in the meta study mentioned in the article. That study only includes HSV1 cases, i.e cold sores on the lips. I don't think many of those are ever tested.
- findyoucef 8y ago
  You're being silly. I doubt your doctor would laugh you of the office for requesting an HSV test. Now a days HSV testing combines type 1 & 2 into a single test, so if you ever go in for STD testing you would get tested for both. You don't have to have symptoms to go in for STD testing. You keep everyone safer by being tested regularly despite the lack of symptoms. It's not usual not to have HSV at that age, I'm 30 years old without HSV, and my father who was in his 70s when he died had never contracted the virus either.
woodandsteel 8y ago
There is this other theory, from what I understand, that Altzheimers is due to the tau protein. I am wondering if that is true in some cases, and is due to some sort of similar mechanism to the one the article is talking about. Or maybe tau is getting dragged along when amyloid wraps around HSV particles.
carlos511 8y ago
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340 points by subcosmos 8y ago

Ok, which medication?

Right on the heals of the recent publication that shows that beta-amyloid in the brain specifically wraps around HerpesViral particles in order to prevent them from spreading! https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(18)30526-9 https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(18)30526-9 Turns out, a great many viruses use low-density-lipoproteins (LDLs, of heart disease fame) to travel around the body, and some even enter our cells by binding to LDL receptors. The APOE gene, associated with alzheimers, binds and transports herpes in the brain and hepatitis viruses in the liver! https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-messenger-a3f5dfeba09 https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-me...

api 8y ago
Umm... sooo... Alzheimers might be viral? Or is it just common mechanisms that might be at work?
- Shank 8y ago
  After reading a bit about it, I think the hypothesis is more that Alzheimer’s is the side effect of the body’s own anti-viral systems acting to contain viruses in the brain. Most of the latest studies are showing a reduction in Alzheimer’s risk after treating patients who have some form of herpes with anti-viral medication.
  - Beefin 8y ago
    Correct, as humans evolved, parasitic infections increased. The APOE gene was a method of slowing down or stopping parastic infection to the brain. "Among the Tsimane as a whole, adults with APOE4 got poorer scores in these tests. But when the team focused on the people with high parasite levels, they saw that the APOE4 carriers had better mental skills, even outperforming APOE3 carriers who were parasite-free." https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/why-does-a-gene-that-increases-alzheimers-risk-still-exist/512396/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/why-does...
    - subcosmos 8y ago
      No.... APOE is a lipoprotein that transports cholesterol, and viruses jump onto it to get into cells. Amyloid-Beta is what seems to be wrapping around the virus particles to block their transit.
- subcosmos 8y ago
  Heart disease might be partly viral as well! Evidence going back to the 80's shows this.
  - scentoni 8y ago
    https://www.webmd.com/oral-health/features/healthy-teeth-healthy-heart https://www.webmd.com/oral-health/features/healthy-teeth-hea...
- tyu100 8y ago
  No. The beta amyloid protein is the primary 'cause' of Alzheimer's. It builds up in the brain and kills neurons and synapses. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent developing drugs to reduce the amount of amyloid in the brain to try and combat Alzheimer's, none of which has led to an effective treatment. This newer theory is that the cause of the amyloid build-up is an immune response to the herpes virus increasingly infiltrating the brain (as you get older the blood/brain barrier that protects your brain from infections weakens) so a possible treatment is to try and reduce the levels of herpes infection rather than attacking the amyloid protein which is your body's immune response to the herpes infection. The APOE4 gene is infamous for increasing amyloid production and being a major risk factor for early-onset Alzheimers and so carriers of the gene are often used in studies to see the effect of treatments. (@subcosmos below has a good explanation of what this gene actually does)
  - subcosmos 8y ago
    The thing about viral infections of the nervous system is that you don't even need to consider the blood brain barrier. Viruses travel backwards through neurons by hijacking microtubule transport networks, and many groups have hypothesized in the literature that it could be getting into the brain by simply infecting a peripheral nerve and traveling up the spinal chord.
    - dnautics 8y ago
      > Viruses travel backwards through neurons by hijacking microtubule transport networks, How does this help crossing the BBB? Can you give a citation?
      - subcosmos 8y ago
        Check out Figure 1 in this paper. The model effectively is that HSV infects a great many people in early life, and becomes latent in neurons until old age. Then it suddenly wakes up again and travels to the brain. All it takes is an infected muscle or other tissue, allowing the virus to get into the nerve. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3546524/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3546524/ Some VERY notable statistics mentioned in the paper : "Such studies have revealed endemic infection rates of 31% in children aged 6–14, rising to 49% in adults aged 14–49, and to a high of 80–90% in the population over 65. In one study of 40 autopsied TGs, HSV-1 sequences were amplified from DNA or RNA extracted from 81% of TGs from demented subjects, and 74% of controls" I blogged about these connections here, for I think that this retrograde transport phenomenon might explain Tau phosphorylation, which is a secondary hallmark of Alzheimer's and other dementias : https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-messenger-a3f5dfeba09 https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-me...
tyu100 8y ago
Great links, thank you.
sctb 8y ago
Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17521994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17521994.
msla 8y ago
> Right on the heals Freudian autocorrect error!
- subcosmos 8y ago
  Hah! I've spent the last several years studying dementia at UCSF actually, and I'm well known in the building for compulsively making puns CONSTANTLY... I once told my boss, who studies sociopaths, that I have "sociopuny" ... and she facepalmed harder than you can imagine .... This one wasn't intentional. I have a problem.
  - sogen 8y ago
    I'd love to meet you next time I am in SF :D
  - sitkack 8y ago
    http://punslam.com/ http://punslam.com/
    - subcosmos 8y ago
      Ah man, everyone keeps insisting that I compete in this. Mind you, I'm not legally allowed to deploy my puns within city limits. EDIT: from the downvote, it seems that I've already been PUNished ... Do... your ... worst HN!
aaavl2821 8y ago
Very informative and thought provoking post If I understand correctly, APOE helps viruses enter neurons. How does APOE4 behave differently than other isoforms in this regard? APOE itself isn't implicated in AD risk, just the APOE4 isoform. And I couldn't tell from your post or a brief lit search, what's the current thinking on the relationship btw APOE and amyloid beta? I think APOE4 is associated with higher levels of beta amyloid but I don't know why. You mention a study showing beta amyloid traps herpes simplex? Is there a mechanism by which APOE4 drives more beta amyloid aggregation to fight viral infections, but as an unintended result leads to AD? I've briefly followed some of the recent papers on a viral link to AD but haven't spent much time on it, your post has inspired me to do some more research!
- subcosmos 8y ago
  Here are a few major points : * APO-E isoform, that predicts alzheimers risk, correlates with how much beta amyloid is present in the brain * It also correlates with how much Herpes Virus is present : https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/herpes-viruses-alzheimers/564887/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/herpes-v... "Readhead and his colleagues have shown that the more E4 copies someone has, the more HHV–6A and HHV–6B viruses they are likely to have in their brains." * We also know that if you knock APOE out in a mouse, and then infect it, there is WAY less HSV penetration in the brain (see figure 1, and note that the Y-axis is logarithmic!) : http://jvi.asm.org/content/76/23/12394.full http://jvi.asm.org/content/76/23/12394.full * Also, APOE isoforms predict whether or not Hepatitis B virus will give you liver cancer. Note that its the E3 genotype that is risky for this, yet its the E4 genotype thats bad for Alzheimers. I take this to be evidence that hepatitis viruses and herpes viruses likely have different binding affinities to these two isoforms. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26823800 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26823800 * Someone should do some drug screening to eliminate binding between known viral capsids and APOE variants. cough YC Bio
  - aaavl2821 8y ago
    Seems like there is still a lot to learn about the underlying biology, though very provocative findings thus far. I may be misunderstanding but I'd think that if beta amyloid traps herpes, then higher levels of beta amyloid would correlate with lower levels of virus, but it seems that isn't the case? Would antiviral therapy be more effective that blocking capsid-APOE interaction? It's my understanding that blocking protein protein interactions is challenging, although inhibiting that interaction would be a nice specific way to block the mechanism
dghughes 8y ago
And the HPV vaccine used to cure the malignant skin cancer on a 97 year-old woman recently.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  It should be noted that cervical cancer is of the same type as that woman’s skin cancer that was cured with direct tumor injections of Gardasil9. Further high signal discussion on Reddit that goes into more depth: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/8z1lg0/hpv_vaccine_eliminates_skin_cancer_in_97yearold/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/8z1lg0/hpv_vaccine...

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago

I tried to visit the website and a pop-up appeared trying to get my consent re. tracking. Since I didn't agree, the website denied access displaying this page: https://anon.healthline.com/ https://anon.healthline.com/ I believe NPR also uses the same tactics. How is this legal under GDPR? In any case, I just disabled JS and read the article as usual. Moreover, I realized the web (the document part, not the apps part) is actually so much better without JS. Honestly, whenever JS is being used, it's almost exclusively against the user, not to help them. This is from someone who is coding in JS for a living.

bryanrasmussen 8y ago
The argument is that they need to do this particular tracking in order to make their website work. I believe this is against the GDPR, but need to make a complaint against them. Arguments why it is against the GDPR, if you can display the text to a googlebot and you will do no change to the structure of the document that is the main purpose of coming to the site then it is not GDPR compliant to deny someone access to the resource based on the argument that they need to do tracking to make the particular resource work. In other words they are quite clearly lying and should be fined. There should be some general make GDPR complaint tool where people can go, say where they are from, write what site complaining about, and it shows you similar complaints for you to add yourself to, or to send a new complaint. Then it packs them off to the relevant organizations to handle the complaint. Probably someone has already made this tool but I don't know about it.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  Maybe we should just change the browser referrer to googlebot's one
volkl48 8y ago
Domain registration is American. I doubt they seriously care about GDPR compliance and would just ignore any EU court filings.
- peteretep 8y ago

im3w1l 8y ago

Apparently the virus in question is very common, most kids have it. So it could be that Alzheimers indicates some immunodeficiency and that herpes medication compensates for it. Edit: I must have gotten confused. I was thinking they talked about HHV6/7 as I saw another discussion about that recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17366591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17366591 From another source: "Nearly 100% of humans are exposed to HHV-6 by the age of three" Edit 2: Although HSV 1 is also apparently very common in adults. 2 out of 3 have it.

eganist 8y ago
There are other threads of research specifically pointing to HSV + ApoE4: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=hsv1+apoe4 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=hsv1+apoe4 Results aren't consistent, but I would be surprised if the latest round of texts didn't spur further examination.
kulu2002 8y ago
HHV-3 is also one of the 8 herpesviruses which seems to be common among children, teens, and young adults causing chickenpox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicella_zoster_virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicella_zoster_virus

eganist 8y ago

I remember asking whether the HSV1/Alz link was a fringe theory based on the lack of popular discussion around it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446016). As someone at hopefully an early enough age who hasn't had any (known? -- since there's never any certainty with it) outbreaks, I'm wondering whether getting such a prescription based on family history at this point would be well advised. It'd also be neat exploring the side effects and seeing if that's a worthy trade, but it sounds like it probably is. Biohacking is fun.

idbehold 8y ago
23andMe says my risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease during my lifetime is 5.59x the average. There are few side effects that would make me hesitate to try something like this to essentially reduce my risk back to average.
- eganist 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aciclovir#Systemic_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aciclovir#Systemic_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valaciclovir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valaciclovir The less frequent side effects of aciclovir raw are interesting. Likewise for the prodrug valaciclovir (Valtrex). Some of these sound like they're a result of some level of impact on brain function. I can't help but wonder if there's any relation. But you're right. The adverse effects here don't seem like much of a deterrent in the face of elevated risk.
- ataturk 8y ago
  Couple things: First, 23andMe is not medical advice and I don't know how they get away with supplying such advice. Second, all medications incur risk to your body, so taking something like a Herpes medication for years in the hope that it might prevent Alzheimer's is a bit insane. A doctor needs to prescribe it (in the US, anyways) so you would have to have their approval anyways. My mother has dementia, so this issue hits home for me, btw. But I don't see myself taking some medication in order to try and prevent something I may never end up getting. Herpes medications are not vitamins, if you get what I mean.

Angostura 8y ago

I'm a mathematical illiterate (no really, and I'm not proud). The headline hurts my head - does "risk 10 times lower" mean that there is one 10th of the risk? so a 1 in 10 chance becomes 1 in 100?

ggm 8y ago
Yes, this is exactly the kind of question I wanted to ask, but was to embarrassed to ask. Thank you! (also suffering from functional maths illiteracy, although I suspect mathematicians would say functional arithmetic illiteracy)
Alex3917 8y ago
> does "risk 10 times lower" mean that there is one 10th of the risk? so a 1 in 10 chance becomes 1 in 100? There’s no way to tell from reading the article, you’d need to read the paper. From the article it’s not clear whether it’s the 2.5x increased risk that’s decreased to 1.25x, or whether people on antiviral meds had a lower risk than the control group (0.25x).
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Protostome 8y ago
The way I understand it - let's say in a control group 1 in 100 got the disease in a predetermined period of time, 10 times lower risk means that in the group that got the treatment 1 out of 1000 people contracted the disease...
notpeter 8y ago
From the abstract: "These authors report that infection with a different herpes virus, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1), leads to a similarly increased risk of later developing SD [Senile Dementia]. Further, when the authors looked at patients treated aggressively with antiherpetic medications at the time, the relative risk of SD was reduced by a factor of 10. [...] antiherpetic medication prevented later SD development in 90% of their study group" So yes. Source: https://sci-hub.tw/10.3233/jad-180266# https://sci-hub.tw/10.3233/jad-180266#

jk27277 8y ago

Interesting. Afaik Indians have a very low Alzheimer risk supposely because of curcurma. My friend claimed curcuma also mildens Alzheimer syndromes. This made me Google if curcuma helps against herpes. It does! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668156/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668156/

jorvi 8y ago
Normal curcuma (aka tumeric) only contains about 2.5% of the actual beneficial compound curcumin. But curcumin is indeed amazing, not only does it help with Alzheimer’s, it also has anti-tumor, blood sugar regulating and fat controlling properties.
- corysama 8y ago
  I saw a rando blog article out there about an old paper studying the components of tumeric. They found it had lots of components each with separate benefits. Unfortunately, the conclusion of the paper was “We should separate all the components so that we can market and sell the same tumeric 10 times!” Obligatory mention of how piperine (black pepper extract) is necessary for bioavailability.
  - reducesuffering 8y ago
    Black pepper is not necessary. There are extracted forms with patented formulas that have studies showing possibly increased effectiveness compared to black pepper. Theracurmin and Longvida
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
Curcumin is one of those compounds that does everything, that's not necessarily a good thing, it is a hit in every assay. When you google compounds and they are antifungal, antidiabetic, antibacterial, anticancer, etc., it isn't a reason to get excited, they have no specificity. Source: I work in natural products chemistry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-assay_interference_compounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-assay_interference_compoun... http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/01/12/curcumin-will-waste-your-time http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/01/12/cur...

bitL 8y ago

Is there any link between high heat and herpes? There was some sauna study showing that people often doing sauna had significantly lower risk of Alzheimer. Maybe herpes is flushed out by excessive heat and sweating or rendered inefficient, even beyond blood-brain barrier?

akuji1993 8y ago
Hm, now I'm interested if people in warmer countries / continents suffer less from Alzheimer's.
blackkettle 8y ago
Just a random guess, but I would hazard that it's not the heat. Going in a properly hot sauna and 'soaking' for 15min or more gets you really sweating, and increases your heart rate. Basically it 'gets your blood pumping', and _probably_ produces an activity profile not too different from mild exercise; and regular exercise has also been shown to consistently lower risk.
- amelius 8y ago
  Could be, but I'd guess this works at the molecular level, with a set of genes that is turned on/off in hot environments and producing some kind of desired mechanism.

credit_guy 8y ago

Clickbait. The actual finding appears to be this: if you are diagnosed with HSV (herpes simplex virus), your risk of dementia is 2.5 times higher. If however, you get an aggressive antiviral treatment, then the risk is reduced by a factor of 10. I take this to mean that overall, the risk do develop dementia is 2.5/10 = 0.25 times the base risk, so overall, the Alzheimer's risk is only 4 times lower with herpes medication, when compared with the general population. The relevant quotes from the article: "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."

carlmr 8y ago
>I take this to mean that overall, the risk do develop dementia is 2.5/10 = 0.25 times the base risk, so overall, the Alzheimer's risk is only 4 times lower with herpes medication, when compared with the general population. Looking at Wikipedia "According to the World Health Organization 67% of the world population under the age of 50 have HSV-1." and according to the source there 11% have HSV-2. There's probably some good amount of overlap between the two, but we have somewhere between 67 and 78% of the population with some form of herpes. In any case the "general population" is closer to having herpes than not having herpes, so we'd probably arrive at a factor somewhere closer to the 10x.
- credit_guy 8y ago
  In most cases that HSV-1 or HSV-2 is dormant, and the person is considered healthy. In this study, the people diagnosed with HSV were considered sick, and in some cases there was a need for the so-called "aggressive antiviral therapy". Now, the study seems quite well conducted, there was a large enough group of people diagnosed with HSV (about 8k people) and a control group of about 25k people who were aged-matched with the first group, but healthy. The two group were followed for 9 years. The main conclusion of the group, that the people with HSV were 2.5 times more likely to develop dementia appears sound, and the power of the experiment probably many times higher than the one necessary to determine statistical significance. The secondary conclusion, that the people "aggressively treated with antivirals" is not as strong, in my opinion. First of all, it's not clear how many in the primary group were subject to that treatment. In an extreme scenario, maybe we are talking only about 50-100, in which case, we may end up with an intended or unintended case of p-hacking. Second, the researchers may have looked for hundreds of things, like how more prone to Alzheimer people who drank more alcohol were, or people who watched too much TV, or other hypotheses. And we may end up again with p-hacking (like in the acne-causing-green-jelly-beans xkcd [1]). [1] https://www.xkcd.com/882/ https://www.xkcd.com/882/

echelon 8y ago

These developments are seriously exciting, and I can't wait for there to be more studies done! If viral links turn out to be causal, then perhaps we have a path towards a cure. I wonder if there could be a link between HSV and the development of ADHD in early childhood. Or perhaps other mental dysfunction?

echelon 8y ago
(Too late to edit my own post.) Furthermore, I wanted to add that there are a lot of studies that indicate lack of sleep as a risk factor for Alzheimer's. Lack of sleep is also one of the biggest causes of HSV reactivation and outbreak. I'd be interested in knowing if Lysine supplements have similar effect to acyclovir. The amino acid has a well studied suppressive effect [1, 2]. I'm going to email some of these authors to inquire. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/6262023/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/6262023/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/640102/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/640102/

aaron695 8y ago

Title is wrong (AFAICS) There's no evidence if you don't have HSV the meds help. If you have HSV and you take the meds, your risk of Alzheimer's is still more than people without HSV. The "added" risk is 90% lower though than those who don't take the meds and have HSV. DOI: 10.3233/JAD-180266 DOI: 10.1007/s13311-018-0611-x (Original study) (The really interesting thing is "These articles provide the first population evidence for a causal link between herpes virus infection and senile dementia." --- dementia might be from viruses)

known 8y ago

Alzheimer's occurs due to a build-up of sticky proteins in the brain called amyloid plaques; And Scientists claim herpes, chlamydia and other infections could be responsible for Alzheimer; https://www.netdoctor.co.uk/healthy-living/wellbeing/news/a26239/could-the-cold-sore-virus-cause-dementia/ https://www.netdoctor.co.uk/healthy-living/wellbeing/news/a2...

noetic_techy 8y ago
The amyloid beta theory is likely completely wrong. All drug trails so far have failed: https://www.insidescience.org/news/Alzheimer%27s-Drug-Trials-Keep-Failing https://www.insidescience.org/news/Alzheimer%27s-Drug-Trials...
- woodandsteel 8y ago
  But what this article seems to be indicating is that the drugs need to target the HSV that the amyloid beta is wrapped around, not the amyloid beta itself.
  - subcosmos 8y ago
    Yup! And that targeting the beta-amyloid is a bad idea since it just allows the virus to propagate again.

noetic_techy 8y ago

I'll add another link to the mix. Looks like all the drugs based solely on the amyloid beta hypothesis have all failed: https://www.insidescience.org/news/Alzheimer%27s-Drug-Trials-Keep-Failing https://www.insidescience.org/news/Alzheimer%27s-Drug-Trials...

peacetreefrog 8y ago

Did the people with the anti-virals take them immediately and upon getting infected? Or did they just have to take them at some point post-infection? Couldn't really tell from the article/not sure how the biology works.

kaycebasques 8y ago
It’s not clear to me, either. Here’s my interpretation, based off the abstract: > These authors report that infection with a different herpes virus, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1), leads to a similarly increased risk of later developing SD. Further, when the authors looked at patients treated aggressively with antiherpetic medications at the time, the relative risk of SD was reduced by a factor of 10. It should be stressed that no investigations were made on subjects already suffering from SD, and that those treated were the few rare cases severely affected by HSV. Nonetheless, antiherpetic medication prevented later SD development in 90% of their study group. https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad180266 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-... And the article: > 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. Within the HSV1 population, a small amount happened to get aggressive treatment at some point. It’s not clear whether they got treatment at any point in their life, or if they got treatment after the study began (meaning they got treatment at age 50 or later). This minority happened to have much less chance of Alzheimer’s later on in life. In regards to the timing of the treatment, my guess is that they got treated upon outbreak, since it said that they were severely affected. They would get treatment when they were in the most pain or discomfort. It sounds like only a small minority of the 8K people in the HSV group got treatment.

kaycebasques 8y ago

A few loosely related thoughts: Background: HSV1 is commonly known as cold sores. Some people get them in their mouth, or on their lips. Most of the population don't develop any symptoms. This link between HSV1 and Alzheimer's could be big business. The numbers are wildly divergent, but it sounds like a sizable chunk of the US population has HSV1. I've seen estimates from 20% to 80%. Even if it's the very conservative 20% number, that's still a big market. The skeptic in me (his name is David) is suspicious of this article precisely because it has the potential to be such a big market. Case in point, there's a link to some HSV1 medicine at the bottom of the article. I wonder if they have an affiliate marketing arrangement with the makers of acyclovir. Tangentially related, I think that this article is on the front page of HN precisely because HSV1 is so widespread. For example, if another article discussed a cure for Alzheimer's, but that article involved some rare condition that does not affect the general population, would that article hit page #1? With that said, I think our society's lax approach to HSV1 is bizarre. In Sex Ed, I didn't get any education around the fact that kissing people and sharing drinks can spread a virus. After reading quite a few articles on the virus, I got the impression that STD researchers don't really know much about it. I could be wildly incorrect about that last point, I'm not a medical expert. It's just the general impression I got when trying to understand HSV1 from an STD perspective. For example, it's been common wisdom for a long time that, if you have HSV1 (cold sores), then you can't get HSV2 (genital herpes). But the reality seems to be more ambiguous than that. Apparently there was a fairly recent study mentioning that college students who have HSV1 performed oral sex on their partners and transferred HSV1 to the partner's genitals. Or something like that. Long story short, although I'm skeptical of the business incentives around associating HSV1 with something as scary as Alzheimer's, I welcome more research around understanding HSV1.

subcosmos 8y ago
I'm the poster. I posted it because I wanted to get some of my dot-connecting noticed more (https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-messenger-a3f5dfeba09 https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-me...), but links to "viral" news content is more click-worthy than the "Show HN" section. As a scientist I've slowly learned hard lessons about how to hook people, and I'm terrible at it. I don't profit from spreading these ideas. I'm just one of the head data scientists at one of the top dementia labs and I'm tired of longevity-based research taking so friggin long. I also have zero desire to spend a year writing this up only to pay some scientific journal top-dollar so they can paywall it. Putting it up on Medium hopefully saves more lives faster. I guess I took inspiration from the viruses and snuck my medium post on an innocuous buzz article that is exploding on social media now. Sorry not sorry :p

fauigerzigerk 8y ago

I think it's worth noting that the herpes simplex patients were seeking treatment for severe symptoms and were diagnosed using an antibody test. That seems very unusual. It wouldn't occur to me to see a doctor over a cold sore and if I did my GP would probably laugh me out of the office. So maybe (here's me grasping at straws) these people had herpes of a severity completely unlike the millions that buy cold sore cream at the supermarket. Or they had symptoms for the very first time, which would be extremely unsual as well considering they were all over 50. None of that takes away from the surprising effect of the anti-viral treatment on Alzheimer's, but I think the size of the effect may be related to the unusual severity of these particular herpes outbreaks.

subcosmos 8y ago
Antibody tests aren't unusual at all. In terms of why they were tested, some of the articles in the press lately seem to indicate that its in response to a shingles infection. Thats when the chickenpox virus (a herpesvirus) becomes reactivated later in life and specifically infects a nerve. We all get exposed to chickenpox and most of us are latently harboring it. I wish I understood all of the herpes isoforms better.
- fauigerzigerk 8y ago
  I'm talking about the third study included in the meta study mentioned in the article. That study only includes HSV1 cases, i.e cold sores on the lips. I don't think many of those are ever tested.
findyoucef 8y ago
You're being silly. I doubt your doctor would laugh you of the office for requesting an HSV test. Now a days HSV testing combines type 1 & 2 into a single test, so if you ever go in for STD testing you would get tested for both. You don't have to have symptoms to go in for STD testing. You keep everyone safer by being tested regularly despite the lack of symptoms. It's not usual not to have HSV at that age, I'm 30 years old without HSV, and my father who was in his 70s when he died had never contracted the virus either.

woodandsteel 8y ago

There is this other theory, from what I understand, that Altzheimers is due to the tau protein. I am wondering if that is true in some cases, and is due to some sort of similar mechanism to the one the article is talking about. Or maybe tau is getting dragged along when amyloid wraps around HSV particles.

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