Can oral infection be a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease?

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a scourge of longevity that will drain enormous resources from public health budgets in the future. Currently, there is no diagnostic biomarker and/or treatment for this most common form of dementia in humans. AD can be of early familial-onset or sporadic with a late-onset. Apart from the two main hallmarks, amyloid-beta and neurofibrillary tangles, inflammation is a characteristic feature of AD neuropathology. Inflammation may be caused by a local central nervous system insult and/or by peripheral infections. Numerous microorganisms are suspected in AD brains ranging from bacteria (mainly oral and non-oral Treponema species), viruses (Herpes simplex type I) and yeasts (Candida species). A causal relationship between periodontal pathogens/non-oral Treponema species of bacteria has been proposed via the amyloid-beta and inflammatory links. Periodontitis constitutes a peripheral oral infection that can provide the brain with intact bacteria and virulence factors and inflammatory mediators due to daily, transient bacteraemias. If and when genetic risk factors meet environmental risk factors in the brain, disease is expressed, in which neurocognition may be impacted, leading to the development of dementia. To achieve the goal of finding a diagnostic biomarker and possible prophylactic treatment for AD, there is an initial need to solve the etiological puzzle contributing to its pathogenesis. This review therefore addresses oral infection as the plausible aetiology of late onset AD (LOAD)

Platelets, aspirin, and cardiovascular disease.

Aspirin was first synthesised 100 years ago and its preparation and marketing is generally reckoned to have been the foundation of the pharmaceutical industry. For most of the time since then it has been used for the relief of pain and fever. The modern phase of aspirin use commenced with the reporting in 1974 of a randomised controlled trial in the secondary prevention of death by low-dose aspirin given to patients who had suffered a myocardial infarct. Reports of other trials followed and an overview of the first six trials was presented to the inaugural meeting of the Society for Clinical Trials in Philadelphia in 1980. There have been two further major overviews and the most recent, based on 145 trials, established that low-dose aspirin reduces vascular events by around one third. It has been estimated that, used appropriately, aspirin could prevent 100,000 premature deaths each year worldwide, at a cost of about 250 Pounds ($400) per life saved, and about 80 Pounds ($130) per cardiovascular event prevented. The evidence indicates that it is seriously underused at present. The aspirin story continues and trials are in progress to test other possible uses of aspirin, in vascular dementia, colorectal cancer, and cataract