Alzheimer’s Hope

A NEW nasal vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease seems to have cleared brain-damaging plaques from affected mice and will be tested on humans in 2006.

In Alzheimer’s patients a protein, beta amyloid, misforms into plaques that destroy neurons, vital fibres in the brain that allow thinking and memory.

The vaccine was inspired by an antibody approach which ran into problems three years ago because 15 of 360 volunteers developed swelling in the brain.

But that brain inflammation also coincided with exceptional clearance of the plaques – a fact which intrigued Howard Weiner, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, USA.

Now he is using a Multiple Sclerosis drug, Copaxone, and Protollin, an imunity stimulator, to good effect.