Drugs called nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) may significantly lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, research from UVA Health suggests.
At the annual risk of developing Alzheimer ‘s disease – up to 13% among individuals taking these medicines – they found, from their extensive analysis of US health insurance data.
Those drugs could potentially pave the way for a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, the team says, urging clinical trials to help confirm if they do.
A new group of HIV drugs – which are known as nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) – could help to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, doctors are calling for clinical trials.
These drugs tend to be much less likely to get you the illness, according to their recent study.
We already knew the group had identified a possible molecular mechanism that might explain the potential benefit of the drugs in preventing Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s and Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association reports the findings.
Risk reduction of 6–13%
The most common cause of dementia ( averaging 60% to 80% of all cases ) is Alzheimer ‘s disease. United States ‘ Reliable Source Usually starts in older individuals age 65 years or older.
By modelled this phenomenon, the researchers looked at two big U. S. health insurance databases and found that among people taking NRTIs, the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s declined by 13% per year in one database and by 6% per year in another.
The chief author of the study, senior researcher Jayakrishna Ambati, MD — founding head of UVA’s Centre for Advanced Vision Science and professor of Ophthalmology in the University of Virginia School of Medicine’s Department of Ophthalmology — told Medical News Today what the study’s conclusions were:
Examining the connection between NRTIs and the risk of Alzheimer’s
Generally NRTIs are used to keep the body from reproducing HIV.
But in an earlier study conducted by Jayakrishna Ambati and colleagues, those medicines also prevent the activation of inflammasomes — part of the immune system that is linked with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
In response to this, scientists wondered whether NRTI users – who also take a drug that treats hepatitis B – would be less likely to develop Alzheimer’s.
To examine this, the researchers used long-term health information from two large U. S. databases: 14 years of records compiled from the MarketScan database (a more diverse population of commercially insured patients) and 24 years of information compiled from the Veterans Health Administration (whose main population is male patients).
They concentrated on people 50 years of age and older who were receiving treatment for hepatitis B or HIV and had never been diagnosed with Alzheimer ‘s.
So how many of the more than 270, 000 eligible patients did eventually develop Alzheimer’s, the researchers wondered.
The findings showed a significant (and significant) decrease in the risk of Alzheimer ‘s among those on NRTI despite confounding effects, including any potential confounding variables such as prior health conditions.
To evaluate the potential of NRTIs for Alzheimer’s, clinical trials are required.
Clinical trials to test whether NRTIs have a role in Alzheimer ‘s are needed.
The lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease was specific to NRTI users and not seen in other HIV drugs, researchers have found.
They concluded that NRTIs should be formalised in clinical trials to investigate whether they can prevent Alzheimer ’s disease as a result of this differentiation – and that effect is probably significant.
Because there are already approximately 7 million people with Alzheimer ‘s disease in the United States, and an estimated quadruple that number to 13 million by 2050, many people want preventive medicines.
Annual costs of Alzheimer ‘s care and its related dementias will grow from $384 billion today to perhaps $1 trillion over the next decade, the Alzheimer ‘s Association says, placing an enormous financial burden on people and their families.
Alzheimer’s disease affects about 10 million people, or perhaps more, in the world each year. An increase in risk will make Alzheimer’s disease much more devastating, ” Dr. Ambati said.
How HIV medications may lower the risk of Alzheimer’s
“It’s an interesting piece of work coming from a retrospective perspective, ” James Giordano, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Neurology and Biochemistry, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, who was not involved in the study, told MNT.
“It shows a positive correlation between lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and the use of nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), drugs which have been used to treat HIV and inhibit the formation of inflammasomes. “
This is important because, using several different convergent lines of data, it has been shown that the tau and amyloid proteins which drive [Alzheimer’s] disease can be produced in the brain by inflammatory conditions of the body and brain.
