Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
The Alzheimer's Pathobiome Initiative (AlzPI), Wake Forest, North Carolina, USA.
J Infect Dis. 2024 Sep 10;230(Supplement_2):S150-S164. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiae328.
Sensory functions of organs of the head and neck allow humans to interact with the environment and establish social bonds. With aging, smell, taste, vision, and hearing decline. Evidence suggests that accelerated impairment in sensory abilities can reflect a shift from healthy to pathological aging, including the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other neurological disorders. While the drivers of early sensory alteration in AD are not elucidated, insults such as trauma and infections can affect sensory function. Herein, we review the involvement of the major head and neck sensory systems in AD, with emphasis on microbes exploiting sensory pathways to enter the brain (the "gateway" hypothesis) and the potential feedback loop by which sensory function may be impacted by central nervous system infection. We emphasize detection of sensory changes as first-line surveillance in senior adults to identify and remove potential insults, like microbial infections, that could precipitate brain pathology.
头颈部器官的感觉功能使人类能够与环境互动并建立社会联系。随着年龄的增长，嗅觉、味觉、视觉和听觉会下降。有证据表明，感觉能力的加速损伤可以反映出从健康到病理性衰老的转变，包括阿尔茨海默病（AD）和其他神经紊乱的发展。虽然 AD 中早期感觉改变的驱动因素尚不清楚，但创伤和感染等损伤会影响感觉功能。本文综述了主要的头颈部感觉系统在 AD 中的作用，重点介绍了微生物利用感觉途径进入大脑的“门户”假说，以及感觉功能可能受中枢神经系统感染影响的潜在反馈回路。我们强调，在老年人中检测感觉变化作为一线监测，以识别和消除可能引发脑病理学的潜在损伤，如微生物感染。
