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A Missing Link Between Concussion and Alzheimer's


Viruses may play a surprising part

And now, researchers in Massachusetts are slamming them with miniature metal pistons to test out whether they can lend credence to a controversial hypothesis: that concussions might reactivate a common virus in the brain, increasing dementia risk. “We think what we found in the 3-D model applies in the living brain,” says Ruth Itzhaki, a visiting professorial fellow at the University of Oxford and co-author on the new study, which was published this month in the journal Science Signaling. David Corry, a professor of pathology and immunology and medicine at Baylor College in Houston, Texas, says the findings are the first to show that repetitive head injury is a convincing trigger for reactivating latent herpes simplex virus and promoting brain changes associated with dementias.

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