A latest study just claimed that people with Alzheimer's disease might have higher levels of bacteria in their brain if they are to be compared with those individuals without the disease. Even if there is still a need for more researchers to validate this, this may provide support to the claim that inflammation leads to having the disease.
Inflammation from bacterial infections is said to be a contributing factor to Alzheimer's disease. With the result of the said study, this hypothesis may already have a basis as the researchers claimed that patients having the condition have higher levels of bacteria in their brain.
Alzheimer's disease is described as a progressive disease in the brain wherein the brain cells become damaged then die. The brain then would shrink and the causes of the disease are not yet established but some experts were pointing into the abnormal accumulation of a protein called beta-amyloid in the brain.
But with the result of the latest study, some researchers and experts now start to consider that the inflammation in the brain can also be one factor for the development of Alzheimer's disease. Usually, Science Daily reported that the neurons in the brain degenerate in Alzheimer's disease and the researchers started to think that this contributes to the disease. The experts normally call this as the neuroinflammation.
The so-called neuroinflammation can be a reaction to the bacteria in the brain but the blood-brain barrier normally stops microorganisms plus other chemicals from entering the brain. But this is not always the case for people who are at risk for the disease making the bacteria getting into the brain.
In the said study, the researchers used post-mortem brain tissue samples from eight people who had the Alzheimer's disease and six people who did not have the said condition. It was then found out that the brains of the patients with the disease had seven times more bacterial genetic sequences compared to the brains of the people who did not have the disease.
The bacteria that were found in the said patients belong to a family called Actinobacteria and the researchers specifically found higher levels of bacteria called Propionibacterium acnes. It has been found out that this kind of bacteria which is linked to acne can also be found to develop and grow in the brain that may cause inflammation. But the scientists said that more studies should be conducted in order to establish that bacteria play a role in the development of the disease.
