Some anti-HIV treatments appear to have a protective effect against Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study by Sanford Burnham Prebys.
- Scientists have discovered beneficial links between certain anti-HIV drugs and Alzheimer’s disease.
- They noticed that the group of HIV-positive people treated with reverse transcriptase inhibitors had a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease than the general population.
- Further research is needed to confirm the link highlighted in the study.
Around a million people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease in France. One of the difficulties of this pathology for patients and their loved ones is the absence of completely effective therapies. But new hope comes from the drug arsenal against HIV.
Treatments that help fight the AIDS virus show beneficial and promising effects against Alzheimer’s disease, according to work from the Sanford Burnham Prebys Research Institute published in Pharmaceuticals.
Alzheimer’s and anti-HIV: reverse transcriptase, the key to treatment?
To fight AIDS, drugs target the enzyme reverse transcriptase (or retrotranscriptase), present in HIV. The latter is capable of converting RNA into DNA, and allows the infection of a cell. By blocking the activity of reverse transcriptase, the treatment prevents the spread of the virus and infection.
Researchers have found that the brain also has reverse transcriptases. These have been linked to Alzheimer’s disease in previous studies. If these enzymes are different from those in viruses, the team wondered whether it was possible to inhibit them with anti-HIV drugs.
To answer their questions, the scientists reviewed the anonymized medical records of more than 225,000 control and HIV-positive patients.
“We looked at HIV-positive people taking reverse transcriptase inhibitors and other combination antiretroviral therapies as they got older, and we asked the question: ‘How many of them got Alzheimer’s disease?’ , explains Dr. Jerold Chun. And the answer is that there were far fewer than one would expect compared to the general population.”
Among all patients, just under 80,000 were HIV-positive aged over 60. More than 46,000 had taken reverse transcriptase inhibitors between 2016 to 2019. Scientists determined that the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease was 2.46 cases per 1,000 people among HIV-positive people taking the treatment. It was 6.15 cases per 1,000 for the general population. These data seem to indicate the existence of beneficial links between anti-HIV drugs and neurodegenerative pathology.
Reverse transcriptase: further research needed
Dr. Chun recalls that the drugs studied were designed to target retrotranscriptases of HIV. They therefore probably had only a limited effect on the many forms of enzymes present in the brain, according to him.
“What we are currently seeing is very rudimentary”, recognizes the expert in a press release from his establishment. He adds : “The obvious next step for our laboratory is to identify which versions of reverse transcriptases are at work in a brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease so that more targeted treatments can be discovered”. “These prospective clinical trials of currently available reverse transcriptase inhibitors in people with early Alzheimer’s disease should be continued”estimates the researcher.