Canadian Researchers Studying Use Of Bacteria, Viruses To Prevent Alzheimer's

Toronto, Ontario (AHN) - Researchers from the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto are studying the use of bacteria and viruses to find a solution how to prevent Alzheimer's disease. A team led by psychiatrist Dr. Paul Verhoeff reviewed previous studies done on the subject the past 10 years in a bid to find a link between different infections and Alzheimer's.

One bacteria they have stumbled upon is the Chlamydia pneumoniae, believed to be be the cause of 10 to 20 percent of pneumonia cases outside hospitals. The team discovered in one autopsy-based study that the Chlamydia bacteria was in 90 percent of the brains of 19 Alzheimer's sufferers, but was only in 5 percent of people with no Alzheimer's disease.

Another study pinpointed its location near the amyloid plaques, a typical feature of brains suffering from Alzheimer's. While there is no cause-and-effect connection between the bacteria and the disease, the evidence suggests having that microbe make people more vulnerable to Alzheimer's.

Another virus linked with Alzheimer's is the Herpes simplex virus which caused cold sores. A study showed Alzheimer's patients had APOE-4, a gene identified as a risk factor for degenerative brain condition.

Verhoeff used the analogy of the cold sore to show the effect on an infection on developing a disease previously suffered by a person. "Whenever your immune system is compromised, those cold sores come back... We think that some infections can really increase the chance someone could develop Alzheimer's if the person already has other predisposing factors," Verhoeff told the National Post.

Verhoeff's study came out in the Alzheimer's and Dementia Journal.

Another Sunnybrook study on Alzheimer's which came out in December 2007 said there is a difference in response to treatment of the disease among patients with and without white matter ailments in selective areas of the brain. The white matter disease is a common condition of the brain which weakens a person's cognitive abilities, particularly during the aging process. A new scale was developed by Sunnybrook scientists to measure the amount of WMD in parts of the brain that has a key role in its attention, learning and memory functions.