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Comment by azangru | Hacker News Reader

> Ten years ago similar articles on prion-based infections causing Alzheimer's was the hotness, until it wasn't.

I think it was not so long ago that I saw an article linking herpes viruses to Alzheimer's (which sounded much more plausible than an oral bacterium). Something must be causing those amyloid deposits...

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A recent study I've seen suggests that all three might have a causal role to play. Going from memory, the research suggests that amyloid plaque is part of an immune response to pathogenic infections in the brain. So herpes or P. gingivalis infections might trigger the build up of the plaque. The other causal factor is that certain forms of these plaques have prion-like properties, in that they induce a malfolding that has increased toxicity.

Wouldn't it be incredible if multiple independent lines of inquiry converged into a single unified explanatory framework?

It could well be that more or less any infection in the wrong place could cause it. It doesn't have to be a specific bacteria.

I don't know where I picked up the idea, but I've long thought that it makes a kind of sense that oral plaque and gum disease would be linked to heart and brain diseases.

>I don't know where I picked up the idea

It is possible that you might have been pre-conditioned to think that way by the colossal dental industry; which has put out a fair amount of graphic imagery ranging from the saccharine to alarming, surrounding various aspects of oral hygiene and endorsing a variety of bacteria destroying toothpastes & mouth-washes to plaque-hunting rotating brushes in multitude of configurations etc., which compounded by this topic appearing with some regularity on HN might be reinforcing some of your preconceived notions.

Regardless, maintaining basic oral hygiene should be de rigueur, despite how feasible or tenuous the link(s) to other conditions might be.

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