There has been a bunch of studies connecting Alzheimers to HSV and now this potentially connects it back?
"Circadian cycles impact Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) infection by influencing both the host's immune response and the virus's replication."
Update: I'm no expert in any of this. Just thinking aloud. Would love some much smarter HN community to speak up on the topic.
Are we sure on the causality here? Many people get chronic fatigue from a mono infection (EBV) and chronic fatigue has a dysautonomia componenent which has a circadian rhythm component. A lot of this stuff is bidirectionally related, forming a reinforcing loop.
What about heredity of some types of Alzheimer?
What you'll see repeatedly in the comments on articles like this is that Alzheimer's is more of a shared endpoint of many different root causes. Usually one person is complaining that the research is focusing on the wrong cause, or only treating symptoms, or misrepresenting the problem, etc etc. While other are defending it is important incremental understanding within one part of a very large space. (Oh and don't forget the people complaining about mouse research in the first place).
What I'm learning from these articles is that Alzheimer's results when certain processes fail and negative feedback loops begin. That could be due to a genetic issue (and thus is heritable as you mention), or an immune response (and thus correlated with HSV infection), a toxin, a sleep disorder, whatever. In some cases disrupting the loop maybe be enough to restore function. In others we need to understand the unique root causes. There are many areas to explore and disentangle.
The Genetics of Alzheimer Disease (2012) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3475404/
New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (2022) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01024-z
The complex genetic architecture of Alzheimer's disease: novel insights and future directions (2023) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-39...
Towards cascading genetic risk in Alzheimer’s disease (2024) https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/147/8/2680/7685999