For the past several decades, Balin鈥攚ho recently co-authored an editorial in the which called for more focus and funding on this area of research鈥攁nd his colleagues have operated under the hypothesis that infection is the root cause of Alzheimer鈥檚 disease鈥攖he first link in a chain of events that causes cells in the brain to malfunction and produce too much waste, which then causes the brain to defend itself by creating the tau and amyloid buildup that is synonymous with the disease.
鈥淭he 鈥榳aste鈥� blocks the ability of the cell to create chemical messengers within the cells as well as the ability to communicate with other cells,鈥� said Balin. 鈥淥nce the cells begin to misbehave, they continue until they die. As these cells die, the ones they communicate with die. This process then continues along typical cognitive pathways leading to further functional and cognitive deficits.鈥�
Existing research has shown that a change in the sense of smell is one of the earliest symptoms of Alzheimer鈥檚, along with early learning and memory deficits. Balin explains that the path from the nose to the brain鈥攖he olfactory pathway鈥攊s highly and directly connected to the brain鈥檚 learning and memory centers. To that end, he and his team hypothesize that breathing in harmful pathogens could trigger the malfunctioning of cells in the brain.
Balin and his team have studied the brain tissues of those who died of Alzheimer鈥檚, and were able to identify the bacteria Chlamydia pneumoniae in the cells of 85-90 percent of those brains. That bacteria (different from the sexually transmitted form), can enter through the nose via that olfactory pathway, and could trigger the process of cell damage.
鈥淚t is possible to catch an infection that would require the use of valuable brain energy to defend. When the brain defends against an infection, you get inflammation in the brain,鈥� said Balin. 鈥淭he inflammatory response, once triggered, can hang out, damaging the cells. So, if the infection was a gun, the inflammatory response would be the bullet. With repeated firing, your brain cells begin to malfunction and die.鈥�
Balin likens this process to those who are predisposed toward depression. 鈥淥ne person could go through life without developing the disease, while another person could experience it. For the latter individual, they may have experienced an environmental episode, like losing a mother, which would trigger a biological response. So, the gun (that biological predisposition) wouldn鈥檛 be a problem until there was a bullet (the mother鈥檚 death). Then, that person would experience depression.鈥�
Now that Balin and other researchers are honing in on infection as a suspected trigger to Alzheimer鈥檚, he says the next step is to focus on avoiding and combatting infection, which could ultimately prevent the disease. 鈥淭his prevention is just as important, if not more, as the majority of research currently focuses on slowing down the progression of cell damage after disease diagnosis,鈥� said Balin. 鈥淭he latter is just a Band-Aid approach. But the former could stop the process before it starts.鈥�
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