14 DAY TRIAL // In a new study supported by the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), researchers with the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Miami discovered that memory and brain functions are hampered by exposure to even the most common illnesses.
During a presentation held at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2014, the research team argued that these negative effects are visible even when the infection itself is not. Some pathogens can infect human hosts without causing exterior symptoms for a long time.
The team mainly focused its efforts on bacteria and viruses including Chlamydia pneumoniae, which causes pneumonia; Helicobacter pylori, which can cause stomach cancer; cytomegalovirus, and both herpes simplex viruses, Heart reports.
The levels of antibodies the immune system produces to fight off these pathogens lead to memory declines, lowered cognitive performances, a decrease in mental processing speed and reasoning abilities, as well as to less abstract thinking and planning.
The investigation was conducted on a sample of 588 individuals from the Northern Manhattan Study. Half of test participants took cognitive tests 5 years after the original investigation. The lead researcher on the study was Clinton Wright, MD, MS, the scientific director at EMBI.
“We were very interested in what were the risk factors for cognitive performance and decline,” he said, adding that researchers are still unsure of the nature of the neural connections that underlie this association.
“It could be caused by an immune system response to the infections or the infection itself could result in clinical damage that we’re not aware of,” the expert added. “There is no evidence yet that treating these infections is beneficial.”
“It would be great if treatment prevented these bad outcomes, but we’re very far away from having that type of evidence,” Wright said. The team found that people infected with the bacteria and viruses listed above have a higher-than-average chance of suffering from a stroke, atherosclerosis or inflammation later on.
The expert and his group now plan to extend their research to a more genetically-diverse population. Almost 70 percent of all people in the study were Hispanics, and scientists want to determine whether the same connections apply to Whites, Blacks and Asian as well.