The More You Know And Remember, The More You Learn

Recently eaten: chicken sandwich, lentil soup
Recent annoyance: people at the gym who don't put the weights back in the right place when they are done

It seems to me that this only adds insult to injury. What if you can't even remember that you have herpes? And we all know that the rate is STDs in senior citizens is growing at at an alarming rate.

Herpes Might Cause Alzheimer's
"New research supports growing concerns that herpes plays a role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.

The latest work, announced today, shows a link between a gene and herpes simplex 1, or HSV. The form of the ApoE gene called ApoE-4 is the leading known risk factor for Alzheimer’s. And HSV is the form of herpes that causes cold sores around the mouth. More than 80 percent of Americans are infected with HSV.

The researchers, at the University of Rochester Medical Center, found that ApoE-4 effectively puts out a welcome mat for the herpes virus, allowing it to be more active in the brain.

“The data suggest that ApoE-4 may support the ability of HSV to be a more virulent pathogen,” said Howard Federoff, lead author of the research published online in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

The research involved measuring the activity levels of HSV in the brains of mice with different forms of the human ApoE gene.

The team found that the virus infiltrates brain cells about the same whether or not mice have the ApoE-4 form of the gene. But in mice with the ApoE-4 version, the virus is less likely to be latent and thus more likely to multiply.

Scientists have known for several years that the ApoE-4 gene plays a role in Alzheimer’s but the idea that it works in concert with the herpes virus is new.

Ruth Itzhaki of the University of Manchester has conducted several studies showing a correlation between herpes and Alzheimer’s. Patients suffering from the dementia disease who also have the ApoE-4 form of the gene also have more herpes DNA in the brain regions that are affected by Alzheimer’s, she found. And people with the ApoE-4 version of the gene who have HSV are more likely to get Alzheimer’s than those who lack either the gene version and the virus.

Also, other scientists have found that people who frequently break out in cold sores are more likely to have the gene that makes them more vulnerable to Alzheimer’s."

P.S. I will never be able to go out again because of THIS