Pneumonia initiates a tauopathy

Pneumonia causes short- and long-term cognitive dysfunction in a high proportion of patients, although the mechanism(s) responsible for this effect are unknown. Here, we tested hypothesis that pneumonia-elicited cytotoxic amyloid tau variants: (1) present circulation during infection; (2) lead to impairment potentiation; and, (3) inhibit potentiation dependent upon tau. Cytotoxic species were recovered from blood hippocampus following pneumonia, they extracorporeal membrane oxygenation oxygenators patients with especially those who died. Introduction immunopurified blood-borne into either airways or uninfected animals acutely chronically impaired hippocampal information processing. In contrast, infection did not impair knockout mice amyloid- tau-dependent disruption signaling was less severe mice. Moreover, elicit variants Therefore, pneumonia initiates tauopathy contributes dysfunction.