Antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines could help fight dementia, study suggests | Dementia

Antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines could be used to combat dementia, according to experts who say repurposing drugs approved for other conditions could significantly speed up the search for a cure.

The number of people living with the disease worldwide is expected to almost triple to 153 million by 2050, posing a major threat to health and social protection systems.

New drugs are coming, but slowly, and experts say more needs to be done to see if existing drugs could help prevent or treat dementia.

Dr Ben Underwood, from the University of Cambridge, said: “We urgently need new treatments to slow the progression of dementia, or even prevent it.

“If we can find drugs that are already approved for other conditions, we can then put them into trials and, most importantly, make them available to patients much more quickly than we would for a completely new drug. new. »

In new research led by Cambridge and the University of Exeter, researchers looked at studies linking commonly used medications to the risk of dementia.

They analyzed data from 14 studies that tracked the health of more than 130 million people and involved 1 million cases of dementia.

They also analyzed prescription data and identified several medications that appeared to be linked to dementia risk.

Overall, they found a “lack of consistency” between studies in identifying which medications might change a person’s risk of dementia. But they found a few “candidates” that might warrant further study.

An unexpected finding was an association between antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines and a reduced risk of dementia. This discovery supports the hypothesis that some cases of the disease could be triggered by viral or bacterial infections.

Anti-inflammatory medications such as ibuprofen have also been found to be associated with reduced risk. Inflammation is increasingly recognized as a significant contributing factor to a wide range of diseases.

There was conflicting evidence for several classes of medications, with some blood pressure medications and antidepressants and, to a lesser extent, diabetes medications being associated with a decreased risk of dementia and others associated with increased risk. increased, the researchers said.

But the study published in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia: Translational Research and Clinical Interventions suggests there is “biological plausibility” for some drugs to be tested further.

“The association between antibiotics, antivirals, and vaccines and decreased risk of dementia is intriguing,” the researchers wrote.

“Viral and bacterial infectious causes of common dementias have been proposed, supported by epidemiological data linking infection to dementia risk, antiviral drugs have been identified as being among the most promising repurposed drugs for dementia and there is a growing interest in vaccination as generally protective.

“Our results support these hypotheses and lend further weight to these agents as potentially disease-modifying or dementia-preventive.”

Dr Julia Dudley, head of research strategy at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said it was too early to say whether existing drugs could be used to reduce the risk of dementia. Researchers will need to confirm the results in clinical trials, she added.

Dr Richard Oakley, associate director of research and innovation at the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “If we can repurpose medicines that have already been shown to be safe and approved for use in other conditions, this could save millions of pounds and decades needed to develop a new dementia drug from scratch and bring us closer to victory over dementia.

“This research provides some initial grounding and indicates which drugs have the potential to be repurposed for dementia and should be prioritized for further research.”