American and Australian scientists have developed a vaccine that can be an effective means of preventing Alzheimer’s disease. The new drug was successfully tested in animals and reduced the risk of dementia (dementia) in mice. Now he is being prepared for clinical trials.
Recall that Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most common causes of senile dementia in the world. In patients, memory and other cognitive abilities are gradually destroyed, behavior is disturbed. Alzheimer’s disease in the world affects about 50 million people.
Causes of the disease? If quite simple, accumulations of “dangerous” proteins appear in the brain over time. There is no cure for this ailment in the world – there are only drugs that are aimed at reducing the first symptoms.
However, scientists have proposed their approach to prevention. They created a combination of two vaccines that act simultaneously on two targets – two pathological proteins.
An innovative drug was administered intramuscularly to genetically modified laboratory mice. Without a vaccine in the brain, they developed the same processes that are observed in Alzheimer’s disease in humans.
However, the combination of the two vaccines had a positive effect: the animal body produced a sufficient amount of antibodies that “recognize” and attack dangerous clusters of proteins. The amount of deposits in the brain has decreased significantly.
“The vaccine is effective in preventing memory impairment in animals with only developing protein deposits,” they say. News.Science Professor Nikolai Petrovsky from Flinders University in Australia. – We also showed the effectiveness of the drug and to combat already existing pathological plaques in the brain.
The authors of the development are sure: the use of a combination vaccine will be the key to the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and senile dementia in humans. Clinical trials of the drug can begin within two years.
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