好消息! 首個老年癡呆疫苗有望問世!

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，美國和澳大利亞的科學家在有望預防癡呆症、阿爾茨海默症及其他相關疾病的疫苗的研究上取得進展。在某些情況下，該疫苗甚至可以逆轉這些疾病的病情。

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.

這對此類疾病的治療而言意義重大，因爲這種新藥物能夠專門針對惡化和導致阿爾茨海默症的tau蛋白和異常的β-澱粉樣蛋白進行治療。

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.

澳大利亞福林德斯大學的研究員尼古拉·彼得羅夫斯基稱，更棒的是，這種藥物或僅在2-3年內即可進行人體試驗。

"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："如果我們能在臨牀前期試驗取得成功，那麼在3-5年內我們將有望取得近年來醫學史上的最重大的進展之一。"

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.

彼得羅夫斯基接受澳大利亞廣播公司採訪時表示，疫苗中的抗體會像拖車一樣移除被疾病損害的蛋白質。在新的治療形式中，研究人員們將β-澱粉樣蛋白和tau蛋白的兩個獨立候選疫苗結合了起來。

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.

人們最近才發現tau疫苗的第二個候選者，它是逆轉大腦所受損傷的最有效手段。如果β-澱粉樣蛋白疫苗能夠被當做預防癡呆症的手段，那麼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.

根據最近的小白鼠實驗，二者結合起來之後產生的新藥物甚至更加有效。

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.

換句話說，新疫苗部分專注於引發阿爾茨海默病的元兇，另一部分則專注於使得該病惡化的罪魁禍首。

"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.

彼得羅夫斯基解釋道：“給特定年齡段的病人（比如50歲）服用新藥物以阻止他們患癡呆症，但癡呆症早期患者也可以服用此藥來緩解甚至逆轉病情。”

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，全世界約有750萬例阿爾茨海默病被診斷出來。西方世界的老齡化人口和不斷增加的二型糖尿病患者則使得未來黯淡無光。阿爾茨海默病是老年人患癡呆症的最常見原因。

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.

近幾年來，人們在阻止癡呆症這方面投入了大量資金，但卻只有不到0.5%的人能夠得到幫助。這不是一個很高的成功率。爲了改善這種情況，最先進的通用疫苗平臺MultiTEP橫空出世，以此更有效地針對導致大腦中這些類型的問題的蛋白質。