好消息! 首个老年痴呆疫苗有望问世!

Scientists working in the US and Australia have made progress on a potential vaccine that could prevent and, in some cases, even reverse the onset of dementia, Alzheimer's and other related diseases.

近日，美国和澳大利亚的科学家在有望预防痴呆症、阿尔茨海默症及其他相关疾病的疫苗的研究上取得进展。在某些情况下，该疫苗甚至可以逆转这些疾病的病情。

This could be a big deal in the treatment of these diseases, as the new drug is able to specifically target the tau proteins and abnormal beta-amyloid that can build up and cause Alzheimer's.

这对此类疾病的治疗而言意义重大，因为这种新药物能够专门针对恶化和导致阿尔茨海默症的tau蛋白和异常的β-淀粉样蛋白进行治疗。

Even better, it could be ready for human trials in as little as two to three years, according to researcher Nikolai Petrovsky from Flinders University in Australia.

澳大利亚福林德斯大学的研究员尼古拉·彼得罗夫斯基称，更棒的是，这种药物或仅在2-3年内即可进行人体试验。

"If we are successful in preclinical trials, in three to five years we could be well on the way to one of the most important developments in recent medical history," he said.

他表示："如果我们能在临床前期试验取得成功，那么在3-5年内我们将有望取得近年来医学史上的最重大的进展之一。"

Petrovsky told ABC that the antibodies in the vaccine candidate work like tow trucks turning up to remove proteins damaged by disease. Two separate potential vaccines, one for beta-amyloid and one for tau proteins, have been combined to form the new treatment.

彼得罗夫斯基接受澳大利亚广播公司采访时表示，疫苗中的抗体会像拖车一样移除被疾病损害的蛋白质。在新的治疗形式中，研究人员们将β-淀粉样蛋白和tau蛋白的两个独立候选疫苗结合了起来。

The second tau vaccine candidate is the most recent to be discovered and is the most effective at reversing damage in the brain. The beta-amyloid one works best if it's given as a preventative measure for those at risk of dementia.

人们最近才发现tau疫苗的第二个候选者，它是逆转大脑所受损伤的最有效手段。如果β-淀粉样蛋白疫苗能够被当做预防痴呆症的手段，那么它才能起到最大作用。

Combined, the two drugs are even more effective, based on recent tests carried out on groups of mice.

根据最近的小白鼠实验，二者结合起来之后产生的新药物甚至更加有效。

To put it another way, one part of the new vaccine focusses on what triggers Alzheimer's, and the other focusses on what makes it get worse.

换句话说，新疫苗部分专注于引发阿尔茨海默病的元凶，另一部分则专注于使得该病恶化的罪魁祸首。

"It could be used both to give people at a particular age, say 50 years of age when they are perfectly fine, to stop them developing dementia, but potentially also could be given to people at least in the early stages of dementia to actually try and reverse the process," explained Petrovsky.

彼得罗夫斯基解释道：“给特定年龄段的病人（比如50岁）服用新药物以阻止他们患痴呆症，但痴呆症早期患者也可以服用此药来缓解甚至逆转病情。”

Each year, 7.5 million new cases of Alzheimer's are diagnosed around the world, and with an ageing population and an increase in type 2 diabetes in western societies, the outlook is gloomy. Alzheimer's is the most common cause of dementia in the elderly.

每年，全世界约有750万例阿尔茨海默病被诊断出来。西方世界的老龄化人口和不断增加的二型糖尿病患者则使得未来黯淡无光。阿尔茨海默病是老年人患痴呆症的最常见原因。

While hundreds of compounds have been tested for their ability to stop dementia in recent years, only around 0.5 percent of these have been approved to help and alleviate the effects of the disease. That's not a great success rate, and to help get it up, a state-of-the-art universal vaccine platform called MultiTEP has been put together to more effectively target the proteins that cause these types of problems in the brain.

近几年来，人们在阻止痴呆症这方面投入了大量资金，但却只有不到0.5%的人能够得到帮助。这不是一个很高的成功率。为了改善这种情况，最先进的通用疫苗平台MultiTEP横空出世，以此更有效地针对导致大脑中这些类型的问题的蛋白质。