So far this has been missed in the press, but an Azlheimers’ disease vaccine works to remove plaques in the brain. It does not repair damaged nerve cells, or restore the ability to make memory, or restore memories. However, this vaccine very likely will prevent the occurrence of Alzheimers’ in people who don’t already have it, and this probability has so far been ignored by the press.
Thanks, I told my sister about it.
Wow, that will be amazing. My FIL just passed away from Alzheimer’s in February.
Is it being held back? If so, why?
Hey Dr. J. That is fabulous news for those of us with parents that have it since it seems to be genetic. When will it be available? Wish it would help those already afflicted with Alzheimers!
Has some time before they would be close to humans. They did a human trial of an antibody treatment, and stopped it when they found that the patients’ brains were shrinking. Well, duh. The antibodies were taking the plaque out of the brains, so of course they were shrinking.
Anyway, this was a canine trial, preparatory to doing a human vaccination test.
I’d expect that in patients with Alzheimers it might slow the progression of the disease, I don’t think they looked at that, since it was a 2 year study, but I don’t know. The implications are enormous, though.
Very cool. My dad developed the disease at 50…only ten years away for me. It also hit one of his brothers and two of his sisters. <hand in air>Where can I sign up to be a test subject? </hand in air>
gettin’ old! (bump)
Just paranoid. They all had early onset (50 - 55). It progressed rapidly for five years and then they just hung out in a vegetative state for 15 years.
Probably not a headline, since Alzheimers is not usually diagnosed early. - that or it’s already too late for the baby boomers so who cares. Sorry, I’m in one of my moods today, you should probably just ignore me.
At least my Mom was in her 80s before she got it. Getting it in your 50 would be really bad.
same with my mom.It’s really an awful thing, and really hard on my dad.
I don’t know a lot, but if it is a vaccine, would that mean that it would be a one time thing that they could just give to people in their 30s or something?
they probably don’t know, though it seems pretty likely to me. They’d actually inject you with the beta amyloid protein, so it ought to work immune system-wise, like a live vaccine, and those vaccines generally last a long time. It’s going to be a while before they decide whether to go ahead with humans, anyway.
My sister was saying that she didn’t think that the knew 100 % that the plaque or whatever was the cause of Alzheimers.
They are quite confident. The problem now is that removing the plaque doesn’t help much- the plaque has already killed the nerve cells and destroyed the nerve connections that make up the memories. and nerve cells don’t really grow back.
They better hurry up. I don’t remember anything anymore. It is scary. I don’t know if it is that, or just hormones. Or stupidity.
I think a lot of it is you just notice it more because you’re older and looking for it.
I swear I got stupider after having kids. I was in tears trying to count how many Christmas cards I needed to get that year - couldn’t add up two numbers. There’s got to be some sort of tie-in between hormones, memory and stupidity.