Fight Aging!

Chronic inflammation is important in neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, but how much of that is due to age-related dysfunction of the immune system versus the presence of pathogens? Inflammation is a necessary part of the immune response when it is working correctly, after all. Some thoughts on that matter in this open access paper:

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a complex disease resulting in neurodegeneration and cognitive impairment. Investigations on environmental factors implicated in AD are scarce and the etiology of the disease remains up to now obscure. The disease's pathogenesis may be multi-factorial and different etiological factors may converge during aging and induce an activation of brain microglia and macrophages. This microglia priming will result in chronic neuro-inflammation under chronic antigen activation. Infective agents may prime and drive hyper-activation of microglia and be partially responsible of the induction of brain inflammation and decline of cognitive performances.

Age-associated immune dysfunctions induced by chronic subclinical infections appear to substantially contribute to the appearance of neuro-inflammation in the elderly. Individual predisposition to less efficient immune responses is another relevant factor contributing to impaired regulation of inflammatory responses and accelerated cognitive decline. Life-long virus infection may play a pivotal role in activating peripheral and central inflammatory responses and in turn contribute to increased cognitive impairment in preclinical and clinical AD.

Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12979-014-0022-8