Vaccines and Dementia: Part I. Non-Specific Immune Boosting with BCG: History, Ligands, and Receptors.
J Alzheimers Dis
; 98(2): 343-360, 2024.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38393912
ABSTRACT
Vaccines such as Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) can apparently defer dementia onset with an efficacy better than all drugs known to date, as initially reported by Gofrit et al. (PLoS One14, e0224433), now confirmed by other studies. Understanding how and why is of immense importance because it could represent a sea-change in how we manage patients with mild cognitive impairment through to dementia. Given that infection and/or inflammation are likely to contribute to the development of dementias such as Alzheimer's disease (Part II of this work), we provide a historical and molecular background to how vaccines, adjuvants, and their component molecules can elicit broad-spectrum protective effects against diverse agents. We review early studies in which poxvirus, herpes virus, and tuberculosis (TB) infections afford cross-protection against unrelated pathogens, a concept known as 'trained immunity'. We then focus on the attenuated TB vaccine, BCG, that was introduced to protect against the causative agent of TB, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We trace the development of BCG in the 1920âs through to the discovery, by Freund and McDermott in the 1940âs, that extracts of mycobacteria can themselves exert potent immunostimulating (adjuvant) activity; Freund's complete adjuvant based on mycobacteria remains the most potent immunopotentiator reported to date. We then discuss whether the beneficial effects of BCG require long-term persistence of live bacteria, before focusing on the specific mycobacterial molecules, notably muramyl dipeptides, that mediate immunopotentiation, as well as the receptors involved. Part II addresses evidence that immunopotentiation by BCG and other vaccines can protect against dementia development.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Tuberculose
/
Demência
/
Vacinas contra a Tuberculose
/
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Limite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
J Alzheimers Dis
Assunto da revista:
GERIATRIA
/
NEUROLOGIA
Ano de publicação:
2024
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Israel