A research team at a state-run institute in Aichi Prefecture said Monday it has discovered a vaccine to treat and prevent Alzheimer's disease without causing side effects.
Hideo Hara and other members of the team at Chubu National Hospital's National Institute for Longevity Sciences in the city of Obu found the oral drug did not cause side effects in mice and was effective if administered once every six months.
Alzheimer's is a degenerative disease of the central nervous system characterized by premature senile mental deterioration. It is caused by accumulation of excessive amounts of beta-amyloid proteins, which lead to atrophy of the brain.
In the team's experiment, the vaccine, which is a virus whose genes have been recombined so it would artificially create beta-amyloid proteins, was fed to the mice.