United States: A recent paper in Nature Aging supports previous findings that severe infections such as flu, herpes, and respiratory tract infections are associated with a faster rate of shrinkage in the brain and an increased risk of dementia years later.
It also suggests the environmental causes that may cause neurodegenerative disease as well as the biological factors behind the disease.
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The latest research is considered a “leap beyond previous studies that had already associated infection with susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease.” It provides a “useful dataset,” as Rudy Tanzi, who is a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and the director of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital, reported.
Some other more recent articles have reported that flu vaccination lowers the incidence of dementia if one has taken it, as well as shingles vaccination, as the Washington Post reported.
Serious infections have also been associated with further strokes and heart attacks.
Kristen Funk, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, is studying neuroinflammation in neuroinfectious and neurodegenerative diseases, said, “Vaccines are going to be the most protection against both the acute infection as well as these post-infectious effects,” the Washington Post reported.
Brain Atrophy and dementia Linkage to infections
According to Keenan Walker, who is a tenure-track investigator and the director of the Multimodal Imaging of Neurodegenerative Disease Unit at the National Institute on Aging, “The idea that infections can influence brain health for some people has been a no-brainer, especially those who themselves experienced infections,” the Washington Post reported.
Additionally, more severe infections could result in delirium, which might be linked to long-term cognitive problems. As Walker stated, “Big infection, big immune response — not good for the brain.”
The idea that infections might somehow be involved in neurodegenerative diseases has been out there, if only on the periphery, Walker said.
That changed with the coronavirus pandemic, and given accounts of long COVID’s possible cognitive implications, interest in the field was renewed.