Some studies show an association between the herpes virus and Alzheimer’s | Hacker News Reader

Some studies show an association between the herpes virus and Alzheimer’s

theconversation.com

190 pointshourislate46 comments

A good overview of different hypotheses for Alzheimer's was published in Nature a couple months ago [1]. I recommend reading this before jumping on the latest HN theory. This article includes evidence for and against HSV.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4

This is probably why methylene blue works so well to treat it.

See http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3181/00379727-161-405... and http://taurx.com/phase-3.html

Thanks for your comment.

Some/Many HN commentators love what one could call the collective helplessness associated with authoritarian scientism and materialism - the idea that we are thrown into a ruthless and cold universe where life has emerged out of random and no easy solutions exist but instead only costly manipulation of small particles like genes and other molecules may safe us, but only in a distant future that we will probably never reach. Only persons of authority associated with the institutions in power may guide us to the holy land.

Due to that philosophy there are many comments discrediting possible solutions.

What... are you?

What does that question mean?

Very interesting. I was able to find the patent, but not the whole paper. Seems to suffice as a substitute.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US4181128

If you want the full paper just paste the DOI into a certain hub of science.

10.3181/00379727-161-40521

PS: sci-hub: https://sci-hub.tw/

they seem to be describing some protocol also involving light? I assume you can't just drink the stuff?

Methylene blue is an FDA approved drug, it is injected I understand.

I'm pretty confident my 'home chemistry set' included something by that name back in the late 80s. One of the experiments I remember is drinking some of it in order to render my pee blue.

have you acquired super powers, and or become an evil villain since?

Some people would probably claim the latter. The blue pee was temporary, and mildly disappointing from what I remember. But I'm assuming it's reasonably safe if it's included in chemistry sets...then again, mine also had mercury in it..

So the chemistry set encouraged consuming some of the chemicals and also contained mercury? How times have changed...

Hmm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylene_blue#Alzheimer%27s :

A Phase 3 clinical trial of LMTM (TauRx0237 or LMT-X), a derivative of methylene blue, failed to show any benefit against cognitive or functional decline in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. Disease progression for both the drug and the placebo were practically identical.

That was news about the 2016 trial. It did significantly better as a monotherapy in the latest trial in 2017[1].

[1] https://content.iospress.com/download/journal-of-alzheimers-... (pdf)

My former neurology teacher was working on finding a genetic model that could predict Alzheimer's. They said that work was going well. However they were also finding strong evidence for these infection models. which seems to contradict their work. The disease couldn't be both hereditary and infectious. Their answer were that possible we were looking at at least two different diseases that just so happened to attack the same neurons, and hence produce the same symptoms.

Well actually, it could be. Viral infections can cause mutations which lead to other diseases down the line, HPV causing cancer being the most famous. It could also, potentially, be heritable. Or the risk is heritable but the infection actually triggers the disease.

> The disease couldn't be both hereditary and infectious.

Why not? Why couldn't "proneness to infection" be hereditary, and the actual infection completing the disease mechanism?

or the way you respond to the infection could be genetic.

You would expect your models to distinguish the root cause. In your example their are either many infected that do not show symptoms or many related people that don't. In any case one of the models should be off.

>Excitingly, successful prevention of Alzheimer’s disease by use of specific anti-herpes agents has now been demonstrated in a large-scale population study in Taiwan.

So why isn't that a standard treatment now? The abstracts of both studies indicate they were looking at existing antiherpetic treatments.

Things move slowly in medicine, and this is bleeding edge research.

Because internet news spreads quicker than doctor gossip? Since the side-effects with some of the antiviral drugs are almost negligible, you can just but those and try :)

I know I have herpes simplex 1, it has a few times manifest itself as pinkeye or cold sores in times of stress for me. Is it possible I could get acyclovir or some other anti-viral prescribed? Or is it only used when the virus is not dormant? Is there any thing you can take long term to reduce the viral load, or eliminate it?

Maybe ask around for methylene blue. You need an Rx in the US.

The occurence of HSV-1 and HSV-2 together is around 90% of the population. The occurrence of alzheimer’s is insignificant compared to that. So, clearly just having hsv doesn’t mean you’re going to get alzheimer’s. Ideally you’d be able to test for the presence of risk factors before taking a preventative drug (with potential side effects) for the rest of your life.

yes, I understand, but I would also like to not have the entire lining of my mouth and tongue obliterated for 3 weeks again. :D

also I wonder if the fact that I'm actually experience outbreaks every now and then might imply I'm more at risk.

Valtrex (valacyclovir) is commonly prescribed for people who get cold sores. Taken as needed at the first sign of an outbreak (e.g. before it’s visible but when you feel it coming) it can often prevent or reduce the outbreak.

Your PCP should be able to do this for you. You’ll just have a bottle on hand and you’ll use it for only two or three days whenever the outbreak happens.

There are treatments that reduce the frequency and severity of outbreaks, such as Valtrex (valacyclovir hydrochloride), but they can't do anything about the latent infection in the nervous system.

However! Targeted gene-editing to remove or disrupt latent viral genomes infecting human cell cultures has shown some promise, although it hasn't progressed to testing in animal models, much less an in-vivo clinical trial, just yet:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=7885240874375341470

Also:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095279151...

I've seen an assertion that brain surgeons have seven times the risk of developing Alzheimer's as other surgeons (although I can't seem to find it now). If true, that would support an infection hypothesis, though not necessarily implicating HSV.

Valacyclovir is cheap and safe enough that it could be given "on spec", to a very large number of people at risk. If it works, it works.

One might interpret the delay in acting on the infectious hypothesis here as a result of the overwhelming majority of Alzheimer's researchers having no experience with virology. What should you do when you discover you have spent your career on something that turns out to have nothing to do with the cause of the disease you have studied? Probably not try to become a virologist. The most nimble must be casting about for other topics in brain microanatomy and gene expression.

In ten years we might see a flowering of other results as they turn their attention away from Alzheimer's to topics that had been neglected.

Aha:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/09/6456291...

"Correction: Sept. 13, 2018

The initial version of this article overstated the rate at which neurosurgeons and spouses of Alzheimer's patients develop the dementia. The risk is nearly 2 1/2 times greater for neurosurgeons, not sevenfold, and 1.6 times higher for spouses, not six times greater. On Sept. 18, the article was changed to say that the risk for neurosurgeons was a comparison with the general population, not other causes of death for the doctors."

Have not opened the original links and papers, but valacyclovir only works on some of the human herpes viruses. There's something like 6 or 8, and for example the drugs that do exist that tream HHV 5 aka CMV effectively are highly toxic, and are/were only mostly used during the AIDS epidemic because it destroys various vital organs in immunocompromised patients, so the tradeoff is worth it.

A bit off tangent but I never understood why there is a vaccine for herpes zoster (shingles/chicken pox) but not HSV1/2? Are the two viruses that different?

Previously on HN:.

- Alzheimer's caused by dirty air. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230932

- Alzheimer's caused by lack of sleep.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18228627

There's mounting evidence that "health news" is neither healthy nor news.

It's caused by brain damage, the sources of which are many.

Brain cell deterioration is a symptom of Alzheimer's disease, i.e. it brain damage is the effect of the disease, not the cause. What causes that deterioration is up for debate. Finding that cause is integral for better treatment and hopefully prevention and a cure.

At the risk of being a cynic, patterns to date necessitate I ask:

- Who paid for this research / article.

- Is this cause, or simply correlation of a fair common virus?

The article is written by a member of a team that publishes a lot of articles advancing this hypothesis - heck, that’s exactly what this article is about. I’m not qualified to judge the claims on-merit, but the self-serving nature of this article sets off my skepti-sense, and the fact this “major” revelation doesn’t come first-published in a notable journal is the strongest hint the research (while still useful) is probably vastly overstated.

Makes it hard to judge, but there are occasions where peers refuse to believe something right up until everyone accepts it, like the cause of ulcers often being Helicobacter pylori. Peer reviewed research these days isn't always dependable either given the for pay nature of many journals. Findings with actual anti-virals changing the brain function of people with Alzheimers would go a long way to showing the connection. That there is an inheritable connection to the disease is fairly well understood so that so that would make it more likely to get the disease wouldn't be much of a shock.

The story of what causes ulcers is truly crazy. Sounds like something from decades ago. Hard to believe we were that stubborn.

And that is a full field of hard working individuals. I'm almost scared to think what my own biases are. I wish there was a solid framework to approach them, since I think most are basically invisible to the holder.

Well knowing they exist (and affect intelligent, thoughtful people, too) is surely half the battle.

I guess Charlie Munger wrote about the kind of thing you're looking for in 'Psychology of Human Misjudgement'.

But then I heard him interviewed on Chinese TV recently, and he seemed to be displaying some huge misunderstandings on human genetics and intelligence, and making what I consider basic reasoning errors. Perhaps he didn't feel like applying his knowledge of cognitive biases to this area.

I think the glib answer is that that is science. It is the best we have at making sure we don't stay stuck on biases. It is just frustrating, because it would be nice for the answer to be immune from the thing it protects us from.

That is, I would much prefer if science was immune to bias. Evidence is quite clear that nothing is free of bias, though.

MIT & Harvard, NCBI says Research Support, US Gov't, P.H.S. (I believe that stands for public health services, based on googling US Gov't PHS). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/221933

Since I can't read the paper, I'm not sure. I hesitant to generalize, but if dementia can be broadly defined as global, regional, or nuclei-specific cell death. Then a good rule of thumb is anything that impacts the homeostatic equilibria of the CNS in a negative manner, will eventually lead to dementia. Which would account for why there seems to be a plethora of causes.

if lack of sleep and dirty air both compromise immune system function, it would be consistent with the virus hypothesis.

You forgot:

- Alhiemers is a form of diabetes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4578267

Reply on news.ycombinator.com