A cold is dangerous for mental abilities
Living with herpes leads to dementia
Copper News based on ScienceDaily: Could That Cold Sore Increase Your Risk of Memory Problems?Prolonged, for many years, exposure to common pathogenic infections, in particular, oral and genital herpes, reduces cognitive function.
People with high levels of antibodies to viruses and pathogenic bacteria in the blood have a quarter increased risk of deterioration of memory and thinking abilities. These conclusions were reached by American scientists whose work was published on March 26 in the journal Neurology (Katan et al., Infectious burden and cognitive function).
In the course of the study, the authors tested the cognitive abilities of 1,625 residents of Northern Manhattan – a New York City area with a particularly diverse ethnic composition of the population. The average age of the study participants was 69 years. Their blood was analyzed for antibodies to five common pathogens – herpes simplex type 1 (oral), herpes simplex type 2 (genital), cytomegalovirus, chlamydia pneumoniae and Helicobacter pylori.
It turned out that participants with high levels of antibodies to pathogens in the blood, which indicates a long-term exposure to infections, taking into account other risk factors for memory loss and thinking abilities, had a 25 percent increased probability of such a development. The cognitive function of the participants was regularly tested for eight years, but its deterioration over time was not noted, which led the authors to assume that the cumulative negative impact of infections was simultaneous.
The most pronounced effect was found in women, people with a low level of education and life, leading a low-intellectual lifestyle.
The authors suggest that the discovered phenomenon confirms the so-called hypothesis of "microbial dementia", suggesting that some microorganisms have, in addition to a more direct and acute negative impact on organs and tissues, a more long-term damaging effect on the brain.
According to data obtained during a study published in 2006 in the journal JAMA, about 60 percent of the U.S. adult population aged 14 to 49 years are carriers of herpes simplex type 1. According to the US Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), one in six Americans in this age category is a carrier of genital herpes.
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