According to a study published in the journal Pharmaceuticals, Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia in the US. Some researchers say that medications commonly used to treat HIV might also offer potential treatment opportunities for the disease. Currently approved therapies for Alzheimer’s have marginal benefit — they are not cures nor truly disease-modifying — and can also negatively affect patient health.
Some researchers say that previous research identifies a reverse transcriptase-dependent phenomenon known as somatic gene recombination, affecting genes capable of promoting Alzheimer’s disease. The reverse transcriptase is considered part of the brain, i.e., endogenous vs. from an exogenous viral infection. This previous discovery showed that blocking reverse transcriptase might help treat Alzheimer’s disease.
Brain and body have their reverse transcriptases, which may go awry to promote Alzheimer’s disease and likely other brain disorders. HIV the virus that causes AIDS itself is an RNA virus that has its reverse transcriptase. Medical science and the pharmaceutical industry have discovered many drugs called reverse transcriptase inhibitors that interrupt HIV’s life cycle, which has saved many AIDS patients.
Researchers analyzed medical records from more than 225,000 with about 80,000 having HIV and over the age of 60. More than 46,000 study participants had taken reverse transcriptase inhibitors.
Upon analysis, the researchers found that study participants who had exposure to reverse transcriptase inhibitors had a statistically significant reduced occurrence and frequency of Alzheimer’s disease.
The cases of HIV-positive persons with Alzheimer’s disease and really could not find robust evidence of them, despite an expectation a decade earlier by some in the HIV field, of an avalanche of Alzheimer’s disease patients coming from this group.
Prospective clinical trials using reverse transcriptase inhibitors to reduce Alzheimer’s disease are warranted in light of our study and the accumulating scientific literature. Questions remain on when such drugs could work best in Alzheimer’s disease, whether certain sub-populations of the disease could most benefit, and whether certain drugs work better than others, which we believe is the case.
Journal Reference – Chow, T. W., Raupp, M., Reynolds, M. W., Li, S., Kaeser, G. E., & Chun, J. (2024). Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor Exposure Is Associated with Lower Alzheimer’s Disease Risk: A Retrospective Cohort Proof-of-Concept Study. Retrieved from https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8247/17/4/408
