HIV drugs may help treat Alzheimer’s, study shows
Researcher says clinical testing should begin immediately, modest results could help millions of patients
SAN DIEGO — A major new study on Alzheimer’s disease provides previously unknown evidence of how the brain-robbing illness may originate.
Moreover, it proposes that certain HIV drugs called reverse transcriptase inhibitors could immediately be repurposed for Alzheimer’s patients.
Led by scientists from Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in San Diego, the study finds that, as long suspected, Alzheimer’s is a genetic disease. But in nearly all cases, it’s not inherited. Rather, it arises during a patient’s lifetime by genetic rearrangements in neurons. Sequences of DNA are copied, altered and inserted back into the genome.
The genetic rearranging isn’t random mutation, but a process that recombines DNA into different patterns. This reshuffling creates a mosaic of slightly differing cells. The immune system uses a similar process to make antibodies, but nothing like it has been seen in the human brain.
Reverse transcriptase inhibitors might also ward off Alzheimer’s in those with Down syndrome, who develop Alzheimer’s as they age, the study said.
The study was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Digging deeper
Confirmation of the findings is required, said Dr. Jerold Chun, the lead author. But Chun says testing with the HIV drugs should begin immediately. Even a low degree of effectiveness would be better than what is now available.
The study combines single and multiple-cell analytical methods to examine 13 donated human brains, some normal, some with Alzheimer’s. Its findings jibe with epidemiological data from elderly HIV patients. They have been treated with reverse transcriptase inhibitors for decades and almost never get Alzheimer’s.
The first documented case of Alzheimer’s in an HIV-positive individual was reported in 2016.
Cautious praise for the study came from Dr. Paul Aisen, a longtime Alzheimer’s researcher who specializes in clinical trials. Aisen heads the University of Southern California Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute in San Diego.
“The authors carefully demonstrate that there are extensive modifications to genetic material in the Alzheimer’s disease brain,” Aisen said by email.
“These are changes that occur with aging, rather than inherited genetic characteristics. While this is an intriguing idea, the actual contribution of this age-related genetic change remains uncertain.”
About 5.7 million Americans today have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. That number is expected to double by 2060, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Researchers say Alzheimer’s begins decades before symptoms appear. Eventually, the damage eating away at the brain becomes severe enough to affect cognition and memory.
So increasingly, researchers are looking for the earliest possible signs that Alzheimer’s is developing before mental functions are affected.
The study traces the ultimate cause to the genetic rearrangements, so blocking this reshuffling should block Alzheimer’s.
Normal brains also show genetic variation in individual cells. Research suggests this condition is a normal part of brain development. Instead of having billions of identical neurons, each may vary slightly in a way that helps the brain work, Chun said.
This process goes wrong in producing the Alzheimer’s-causing variations, derived from a gene called APP. Certain variants of this gene are strongly linked with Alzheimer’s.
Because genes produce proteins, these rearrangements of the APP gene likely produce variations of toxic brain proteins called beta amyloid, known to be involved in Alzheimer’s.
The study may explain the failures of amyloid-based therapy. Billions of dollars have been spent developing drugs according to what is known as the “amyloid hypothesis,” with virtually nothing to show for it.
Chun said this may be because the amyloid drugs are aimed at a single molecular target, and there’s molecular diversity in amyloid.
“What our data strongly supports is that there could be many, many other targets that would have been missed by these single molecularly targeted therapeutics,” Chun said.
This means the amyloid hypothesis is essentially correct, but doesn’t go deep enough, Chun said.
‘Surprising existence’
In an accompanying perspective article, two University of California, San Diego Alzheimer’s researchers said the study was also important because it provided the “surprising existence” in the brain of what is called “somatic gene recombination.”
“This phenomenon, which has previously been reported only in antibody generation in immune cells, increases the diversity of proteins encoded by a given gene through DNA-shuffling mechanisms, wrote Guoliang Chai and Joseph G. Gleeson.
Doctors could use the HIV drugs on Alzheimer’s patients as an “off-label” use, Chun said. But that would require careful ethical consideration.
On the positive side, there’s no treatment now that affects the underlying neurodegeneration Alzheimer’s brings, and the safety profile of the HIV drugs is wellknown.
“Let’s say this only works 25 percent of the time; that’s still 1.5 million patients in the United States, not to speak of their families,” he said.