Because of the increasing human life expectancy in the modern world, dementia represents an increasing problem to a huge part of the world's population. It also represents a burden to the world economy, since almost 900 billion euros yearly are used for the care of the afflicted. Even though the mechanisms, that lead to the development of this disease, are still not completely known to us, we aspire to understand the changes that take place in the human brain and explain them. These, however, vary greatly among the different types of dementia, which adds to the complexity of developing the cure. The most common types of this neurodegenerative disease, among which we count Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies, represent the front of medical research, but their treatment is still based solely on relieving the symptoms, which is a far step away from curing the disease itself. Because of this, vaccination has shown itself in the last few years as an increasingly promising alternative, because it has the potential to fight the pathological changes in the brain with the strength of the immune system, which is specific and highly personalized. Because of this, it does not cause unwanted side effects in the body, that are ever so present in existing treatments. Vaccination also promises protection from developing dementia, as well as a way to treat people, who are already affected. Many tests have already shown promising effects of different drugs, which are in the process of clinical testing. Everything indicates that in the following years we are going to successfully bridge the gap between the first generation of drugs and an effective treatment for most types of dementia.
|
