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July 28, 2003

INTERNATIONAL IMMUNIZATION NEWS

“A Dose of Hope vs. Alzheimer’s”

USA Today (www.usatoday.com) (07/28/03) P. 1D; Fackelmann, Kathleen

A 2002 study of Elan’s experimental Alzheimer’s disease vaccine AN-1792 was stopped early because the medicine caused brain swelling in some patients, but the treatment’s benefit--of breaking up the amyloid plaques that are thought to be associated with Alzheimer’s disease--suggests that a safe and effective vaccine against the disease may be closer than originally thought.  Researchers at Elan and other companies are trying to create a vaccine similar enough to AN-1792 that it provides the same plaque-busting powers but different enough that its side effects no longer include the life-threatening brain swelling, a development that could have a vaccine on the market within five years.  There is a question, however, that the plaques really are associated with the forgetfulness and personality changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease or whether they are simply another sign of the illness; as such, a vaccine that breaks up the plaques may not change the other problem of memory loss.  Either way, early results from the suspended AN-1792 trial suggested that the vaccine could slow the disease’s progression, and in some patients it appeared to actually reverse problems associated with Alzheimer’s.