AS MANY as 35 million people worldwide have Alzheimer鈥檚 disease. The financial cost to society is immense; the emotional cost incalculable. Billions of dollars have been poured into studying the lead suspect: the formation of plaques of amyloid protein in the brain. But after decades of research, we still have no idea how to treat the disease.
In January, we dropped a bombshell: evidence suggests that, instead of amyloid, the cause of Alzheimer鈥檚 could be bacterial infection. If true, the finding would explain years of failed efforts to grapple with the disease and could at last point the way to effective treatments.
The shock waves don鈥檛 stop at Alzheimer鈥檚. Bacteria have been implicated in a whole host of other major disorders, including diabetes, stroke and heart disease.
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It may be time to radically rethink our most prevalent diseases. Many are typically blamed on unhealthy lifestyles. As a consequence, living with a chronic disorder, however common, comes with a faint shadow of shame: that you haven鈥檛 eaten, exercised or lived well enough to keep morbidity at bay.
Now the gum disease-causing organism Porphyromonas gingivalis is moving up the suspect list. As a master manipulator of our immune system, it is a particularly tricky bacterium to treat. The key challenge for researchers is to find a way to stop the organism from wreaking havoc in our bodies through inflammation, without switching off vital defence mechanisms.
However, there is much we can do while we await further evidence. Although it is possible that our lifestyles aren鈥檛 solely to blame for our most common disorders, they may currently provide our best chance of keeping Alzheimer鈥檚 and other diseases at bay.
Good oral hygiene is an obvious start, but most of us probably already carry P. gingivalis to some extent. So, for many of us, our best hope is to do everything we can to reduce low-level chronic inflammation. This returns us to a familiar refrain: good diet and plenty of exercise are essential.