Drugs used to treat HIV may protect against Alzheimer's disease (AD). The corresponding study was published in Alzheimer's & Dementia. The findings provide a rationale for clinical testing.
"It's estimated that over 10 million people around the world develop Alzheimer's disease annually. Our results suggest that taking these drugs could prevent approximately 1 million new cases of Alzheimer's disease every year," Jayakrishna Ambati, MD, Professor in the University of Virginia School of Medicine's Department of Ophthalmology, said in a press release.
Nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) have been approved by the US FDA to treat HIV and hepatitis B infection. Previous research shows that they also inhibit inflammasome activation aside from their antiretroviral activity. In the current study, researchers thus investigated the link between NRTI exposure and the development of AD.
To do so, they analyzed 24 years of data from the US Veterans Health Administration Database alongside 14 years of data from the MarketScan database of commercially insured patients. They included patients who were at least 50 years old and were taking medications for either HIV or hepatitis B. Over 270,000 patients met the study criteria.
After adjusting for potential confounding factors such as pre-existing medical conditions, they found that NRTI exposure was linked to a significant reduction in the incidence of AD. Risk of developing AD fell by 6% each year patients took the drugs in one cohort and by 13% in the other. Other HIV drugs did not produce similar results.
The findings warrant randomized clinical trials of inflammasome inhibitors in AD, wrote the researchers in their study.
"We have also developed a new inflammasome-blocking drug called K9, which is a safer and more effective version of NRTIs. This drug is already in clinical trials for other diseases, and we plan to also test K9 in Alzheimer's disease," said Ambati.
Sources: Science Daily, Alzheimer's & Dementia