A study testing whether antiviral medication could help slow early stage Alzheimer’s disease did not show any positive effects on disease progression.

After 18 months, the patients in the study who were assigned to the placebo group performed somewhat better on cognitive tests than those assigned to valacyclovir, an antiviral medication targeting the herpes simplex virus.

“We were looking for a signal that the drug did better than the placebo, but there wasn’t any in this study,” said lead investigator Davangere Devanand, MD, a professor at Columbia University Medical Center, in a press statement.

“On the other measures, sometimes the placebo group did slightly better, sometimes the treatment group did slightly better.”

The study, which was presented at the Alzheimer’s Association Int

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