In recent years, a growing number of scientific studies have backed an alarming hypothesis: Alzheimer’s disease isn’t just a disease, it’s an infection.
While the exact mechanisms of this infection are something researchers are still trying to isolate, a litany of papers argue the deadly spread of Alzheimer’s goes way beyond what we used to think.
Now, scientists are saying they’ve got one of the most definitive leads yet for a bacterial culprit behind Alzheimer’s, and it comes from a somewhat unexpected quarter: gum disease.
In a new paper led by senior author Jan Potempa, a microbiologist from the University of Louisville, researchers report the discovery of Porphyromonas gingivalis – the pathogen behind chronic periodontitis (aka gum disease) – in the brains of deceased Alzheimer’s patients.
P. gingivalis’ gingipains (red) among neurons in the brain of a patient with Alzheimer’s (Cortexyme)