The virus that causes cold sores may be a major cause of Alzheimer’s disease and existing drugs could be used to treat the degenerative condition, researchers have claimed.
British scientists had already identified a link between the cold sore virus – known as herples simplex virus 1 (HSV1) – and Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, affecting more than 400,000 people in Britain.
Previous trials had found the virus was often present in the DNA of patients with Alzheimer’s, but different theories have been posed about why this might be so. The new research, published in the Journal of Pathology, adds weight to the theory that HSV1 could be a major cause of Alzheimer’s; it found that the virus was most often found within the protein plaques in the brain which are believed to be the disease’s main cause.
This does not explain why Alzheimer’s seems to run in families. On the other hand, people failed to recognizes what caused ulcers for a long time using similar reasoning, so maybe I should not be so quick to judge.