Alzheimer's Risk 10 Times Lower With Antiherpetic Medication

A commentary published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease suggests antiherpetic medication has a dramatic impact on dementia risk, reports Medical News Today . The authors cite two studies implying that acute herpes zoster infection increases the risk of dementia, and another demonstrating that aggressive treatment with antiherpetic medication drastically lowers dementia risk. The third study involved 8,362 people aged 50 and older who received a diagnosis of herpes simplex virus (HSV) infection, and a control group of 25,086 age-matched healthy people. Both were followed between 2001 and 2010, with the risk of dementia more than 2.5 times higher in the herpes group than in the control group. Aggressive antiviral treatment was found to reduce the relative risk of dementia by a factor of 10. "Not only is the magnitude of the antiviral effect remarkable, but also the fact that — despite the relatively brief duration and the timing of treatment — in most individuals severely affected by HSV1 it appeared to prevent the long-term damage in the brain that results in Alzheimer's," says University of Edinburgh Professor Richard Lathe.