CASP3 and Alzheimer disease: It has been demonstrated that HSV-1 infection causes several functional and molecular alterations including: neurodegeneration and AD-like phosphorylation of tau protein (Zambrano et al., 2008; Wozniak et al., 2009b), the latter involving the activation of the glicogen sinthase kinase 3; caspase-3-mediated cleavage of Tau (Lerchundi et al., 2011); activation of the arachidonic acid cascade, which is involved in AD-type neuropathological changes (Hill et al., 2009).