Infections, Inflammogens, and Drugs

This chapter examines environmental inflammatory factors in vascular disease and dementia with a focus on infections, environmental inflammogens, and drugs that modulate both vascular disease and dementia. Infections and blood levels of inflammatory proteins are risk factors for future coronary events and possibly for dementia. When early age mortality is high, the survivors carry long-term infections that impair growth and accelerate mortality at later ages (“cohort morbidity phenotype”). Chronic infections, which are endured by most of the world's human and animal populations, cause energy reallocation for host defense. Infections and inflammation may impair stem cell generation, with consequences to arterial and brain aging. Diet may introduce glycotoxins that stimulate inflammation. Some anti-inflammatory and anti-coagulant drugs may protect against coronary artery disease and certain cancers, and possibly also for Alzheimer disease. These “pharmacopleiotropies” implicate shared mechanisms in diverse diseases of aging.