Alzheimer's prevention via a tried-and-true vaccine

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-12-tuberculosis-vaccine-lowers-alzheimer-disease.html

Tuberculosis vaccine lowers rates of Alzheimer's disease in cancer patients

by Hebrew University of Jerusalem

December 23, 2019

"… Currently, Alzheimer's affects one-in-ten adults over the age of 65—a number that is expected to triple by 2030. The need to find a cure is great.

… A research team headed by Hervé Bercovier, Charles Greenblatt and Benjamin Klein at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU)'s Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics has discovered that the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, originally developed for tuberculosis and commonly used to treat bladder cancer, may also be an effective treatment to prevent Alzheimer's. …

Bercovier and his team followed 1,371 bladder cancer patients receiving treatment at HU's Hadassah Medical Center. The average patient age was 68. During follow-up visits, 65 cancer patients had developed Alzheimer's. Those who had not received BCG as part of their treatment had a significantly higher risk of developing Alzheimer's than did BCG-treated patients: 8.9% (44 patients) as opposed to 2.4% (21). Further, when compared with the general (healthy) population, people who had never been treated with BCG had a 4-fold higher risk for developing Alzheimer's than did those who were treated with BCG."

Journal article: Ofer N. Gofrit et al. Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) therapy lowers the incidence of Alzheimer's disease in bladder cancer patients, PLOS ONE (2019).

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0224433

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0224433