Alzheimer’s Vaccine on Hold Amid Safety Investigation

clipped from blogs.wsj.com In another setback for the idea that a vaccine might be able to fight Alzheimer’s, two clinical tests of an experimental vaccine known as ACC-001 from Wyeth and Elan have been halted for the investigation of a potential safety problem. In March, one of 59 patients enrolled in studies in Europe and the U.S. was hospitalized after developing skin lesions on the fingers and toes. The patient developed side effects in March, was hospitalized and later released. A Wyeth spokesman told the Health Blog the patient is still being evaluated. The FDA put a halt on the U.S. trial and and the companies voluntarily stopped the European trial, ACC-001 isn’t related to bapineuzumab, an antibody against Alzheimer’s plaques now in phase III testing. Work on an earlier vaccine, called AN-1792, was stopped by the companies years ago after some patients in a clinical trial developed encephalitis.