Could Alzheimer’s be caused by an infection?

Research into the disease has focused on plaques in the brain. But some scientists think viruses and bacteria play a role - and their work is gaining ground

As Davangere Devanand, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center, combed through the reams of scientific data on Alzheimer's, he stumbled across a surprising idea - could an infection be involved in driving the disease?

I was looking for an Alzheimer's treatment approach that had a reasonable shot of working," he says. I found this old theory, going back 35 years, which linked herpes viruses to the disease, and there were all these indirect lines of evidence."