Antibiotic Resistance and Alzheimer's; A Possible Bane to the Elderly and Immune System Challenge Link to Schizophrenia a Possible Bane to the Young
Claudewell S. Thomas, MD, MPH, DLFAPA, is an established psychiatrist who is currently retired ,, He received his medical degree in 1956 at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and specializes in social psychiatry, public health psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Thomas was board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry... more
A special report in the November issue of Psychiatric Times, reported on new findings from prospective studies which were presented at the 2019 Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) in Los Angeles, CA. The authors were Aliev, M.D., PhD, Bachurin, PhD, DSC, Mikhaylenko, M.S.,Bragin M.D., PhD, Rodriguez, PhD, Somasundran, PhD, Korkland, PhD, and Tarasov, PhD. They reported on about 5.8 million Alzheimer's sufferers in the U.S, with 3.5 million women and 2.3 million men, ages 65 and older. The names and degrees indicate the national average, but not the gender diversity involved.
1. Strikingly, more women have the disease than men. Non-employed women suffer more rapid memory decline than employed women. 2. The verbal memory of healthy women as well as that of women with AD exceeded that of healthy men. This may enable more effective compensation in the early stages of AD. 3. Women with mild cognitive impairment had a denser distribution of neurofibrillary tangles which are formed by the tau protein. 4. Genome sequencing has identified 11 genes related to gender; an immune gene (CD1E) in women and a mucolipin (MCOLN3) in men appear to be risk factors for AD.
Alzheimer's is a neurodegenerative disease usually affecting older people. It is becoming more certain that the amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles typical of the disease are responses to an infectious process in the brain. Bad teeth and bacterial travel to the brain (strep and staph notably) are now implicated. The response of the immune system cells resident in the brain coupled with damage to the vaunted blood brain barrier through drug use, smoking, vaping, etc. allow the invasion of somatic inflammatory processes into the brain. The tangles are the evidence.
The invasion of viruses, bacteria, and other agents that evade antibiotics may be a part of the AD threat to the elderly. At the other end of the life cycle, there appears to be a link between the appearance of schizophrenia and the increased neutrophil count in the first episode psychosis. In the same issue of Psychiatric Times, Brian Miller, M.D., PhD, MPH, reported on studies linking monocyte, neutrophil, and C. Reactive protein (CRP) levels to disease acuity, severity, and treatment response. The evasion of defenses by infectious agents is a serious and growing problem.
