Antibiotics, Antvirals and Vaccines Could Help Tackle Dementia, Study Suggests [View all]

'Antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines could help tackle dementia, study suggests,' The Guardian, Jan. 21, 2025. - Using drugs approved for other conditions could dramatically speed up hunt for cure, experts say.
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Antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines could be used to tackle dementia, according to experts, who say repurposing drugs approved for other conditions could dramatically speed up the hunt for a cure. The number of people living with the disease globally is forecast to almost triple to 153 million by 2050, presenting a major threat to health and social care systems.

New drugs are coming down the pipeline, but slowly, and experts say more must be done to see whether existing medicines could help prevent or treat dementia. Dr Ben Underwood, from the University of Cambridge, said: “We urgently need new treatments to slow the progress of dementia, if not to prevent it. If we can find drugs that are already licensed for other conditions, then we can get them into trials and – crucially – may be able to make them available to patients much, much faster than we could do for an entirely new drug.”

In new research led by Cambridge and the University of Exeter, researchers examined studies which linked commonly used drugs to dementia risk. They analysed data from 14 studies that tracked the health of more than 130 million people and involved 1m cases of dementia. They also analysed prescription data and identified several drugs that appeared to be linked to dementia risk.

Overall, they found a “lack of consistency” between studies in identifying drugs that might modify a person’s risk of dementia. But they found some “candidates” that could warrant further studies. One unexpected finding was an association between antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines and a reduced risk of dementia. The finding supports the hypothesis that some cases of the disease may be triggered by viral or bacterial infections...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/21/antibiotics-antivirals-and-vaccines-could-help-tackle-dementia-study-suggests