A massive data mining study has found numerous associations between common viruses like the flu and devastating neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimers disease, and ALS.
A massive data mining study has found numerous associations between common viruses like the flu and devastating neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis . The findings expand on previous research linking individual viruses to neurological diseases. But experts caution that the study, which relied on electronic medical records rather than biological samples, merely describes correlations and doesn’t prove causation.
Inspired by that paper, National Institutes of Health researchers wondered whether they could mine other large databases to tease out more associations. They focused on viral links to six neurodegenerative diseases: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dementia, ALS, MS, and vascular dementia. The strongest association—a 31-fold risk elevation compared with controls—was found between Alzheimer’s and viral encephalitis. Other elevations were more moderate; for instance, influenza was associated with a roughly fivefold elevation in the risk of dementia.
“There’s a great deal of work that needs to be done to try to link viral exposure and risk for neurodegenerative diseases mechanistically,” concedes senior author Andrew Singleton, who heads NIH’s Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias. In addition, the authors relied on diagnoses from electronic medical records, meaning they only identified viral infections that made people sick enough to see their doctor or land in the hospital. That could cause the team to miss thousands of infections that caused few or no symptoms, potentially biasing the results.
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