Tuberculosis for Alzheimer’s: Risk Factor, Treatment or Prevention

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease is a type of dementia and there were 50 million individuals have dementia in 2018 worldwide and the cost of dementia care to Medicare and Medicaid is so high (about US$1 trillion) in that year. Recently, several articles show that tuberculosis may be increased the development rate of Alzheimer's disease in these patients. So knowing the probable relationship between these two could be helpful. Also, there is evidence demonstrating that the Bacillus Calmette–Guerin (BCG) vaccine and rifampicin as a conventional vaccine and medicine against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infections could be used as a promising agent for the prevention and reduce the development of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. According to our knowledge, the present review is the first and only review that assessed the possible relationship between tuberculosis and Alzheimer's disease as well as the possible therapeutic role of rifampicin and BCG vaccine in treatment and prevention of Alzheimer's disease, respectively.