Alzheimer’s is an expensive disease, in an emotional, physical, and financial sense. Currently, there are more than 5 million people in the United States living with this neurodegenerative disease, and that number is expected to grow as boomers age. The average lifespan of a patient diagnosed with this disease is 7 to 10 years, and is dependent on the stage of diagnosis and the other conditions that a patient may have.

There is no cure as of yet, but a tremendous advance has been delivered. Scientists from the New York University Medical Center have developed a vaccine that neutralizes tau (rhymes with “wow”) protein in the nervous system of lab mice.

Alzheimer’s is caused by the folding of beta-amyloid and tau proteins into plaques and tangles, respectively. The new potential vaccine worked by creating antibodies that bound themselves to the tau protein, preventing the protein from accumulating in the brain and causing damage.

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