A new Israeli clinical trial is testing a tuberculosis vaccine to prevent Alzheimer's - opinion

“What’s new?” I ask neurologist Tamir Ben-Hur as we happen to meet in the employees’ cafeteria at Hadassah-University Medical Center, in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem. My tray is piled high with spicy fish and abundant Mediterranean vegetables. Good for the brain.

He describes his newest clinical trials.

I’ve known for a few years that there is a blood test that can predict whether or not one is likely to get Alzheimer’s disease. It’s available and free for those of us between ages 65 and 80.

I was Ben-Hur’s English teacher at the Hebrew University Secondary School when he was a teen and I was 23, so he pretty much knows my age.

Although I know that I can take this test which would shed light on my future, I’ve, well, sort of postponed it. Chickened out, in other words.

“Half of persons who are offered the test say they don’t want to know if they will get Alzheimer’s. The other half say they want to know so that they can plan their futures,” Ben-Hur has told me. He’s in the second category and has taken the test himself, passing with flying colors.

Taking part in clinical trials

I am happy to take part in clinical trials, a form of volunteering that advances science. Working at Hadassah, where doctors and nurses are always doing research and looking for subjects, I took part several years ago in a different clinical trial in the neurology department.

It required the neurologist to put electrodes in my hair to measure brainwaves. This was a messy business that could probably be done more efficiently by a hairdresser experienced in permanent waves and color highlights.

Once electroded up, I was attached to a machine to measure my brain activity. I had to answer a long series of questions, like “What’s closer to Jerusalem – Tel Aviv or Haifa?” (a cinch, right?), and then “What’s closer to Jerusalem – Kiryat Malachi or Hadera?” The questions got harder.

After the paper was published in a prestigious scientific journal, I asked to know how I’d done. The researcher agreed to check.

Great, he said. The actual words? “Excellent brain.”

Talk about a compliment to savor!

But later, I wondered whether I was told the truth. The bride is always beautiful, as they say in the Talmud. Having subsequently accompanied a dear friend on her journey after she was diagnosed with an incurable brain disease, I know that doctors involved in steps of the diagnosis are sometimes reluctant to share bad news. That falls, at last, to the neurologist in charge. In my friend’s case, that was coincidentally Prof. Ben-Hur.

One in nine persons 65 and older develops Alzheimer’s disease. Neither of my parents had it. But then again, my father died at 63. I don’t have the symptoms, which, of course, I checked several times with Dr. Google.

What would be the good of knowing? But today, over carrots in tehina, Ben-Hur shares his news. It turns out that the century-old vaccine used for tuberculosis is showing promising results in slowing Alzheimer’s disease.

According to the official publication of the brain division and department of neurology at Hadassah Medical Organization, the theory is that the BCG vaccine might activate systemic and brain immune cells to protect the brain from Alzheimer’s disease.

The BCG vaccine was used, starting in 1921, to prevent tuberculosis. Israeli newborns were routinely given the inoculation as part of Israel’s public health initiative to prevent TB when it was more common in Israel. Today, only babies at high risk are vaccinated, and even for them the vaccine has limited effectiveness for tuberculosis.

Previous studies, at Hadassah and the Hebrew University and other centers around the world, have found that administering the BCG vaccine may reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by strengthening the immune system, making it more effective.

So shouldn’t we all be taking it?

That, of course, is exactly why there is a clinical trial. This is the first-in-the-world clinical trial to directly test the effectiveness of the BCG vaccine in the fight against Alzheimer’s. How amazing that would be if we in Israel had the proof.

I call and make an appointment.

Potential participants must be cognitively intact, so I have to undergo a cognitive test. Tip No. 1: You take the blood test while fasting first, so if you, like me, need that first cuppa before you tackle the world, have your mug of Joe ready.

I roll up my sleeve, and the blood is sent off for evaluation. I chug my coffee and take the cognitive test. Tip No. 2: You might want to practice counting backwards by seven. Except for my insistence that bananas – on which we recite the borei pri ha’adama, the fruit of the ground blessing – aren’t really fruit, it goes smoothly.

My examiner pronounces me mentally fit.

In a few weeks I’ll know the results of the blood tests. The clinical trial will evaluate if the BCG vaccination reduces the level of phosphorylated tau protein and other biomarkers in the blood and thus helps prevent the development of dementia. Decreased protein level phosphorylated tau in the blood will be an indication of a reduced risk of developing dementia over the next few years. In addition, my blood will be used for basic research aimed at identifying systemic factors that drive the disease, in order to develop additional drugs.

If – God forbid – I show the biomarkers associated with the probable development of Alzheimer’s, I will receive three doses of the vaccine, which has minimal side effects.

My sister and I spent part of a summer when I was 10 with an aunt who was soon after diagnosed with TB. Aunt Lucile was hospitalized in a Connecticut sanatorium. We never had side effects from the inoculation or got tuberculosis, so taking the shots doesn’t scare me.

Follow-up includes blood tests and additional cognitive tests. I’ll let you know how I do.

Here’s what’s thrilling to me. We’re a country at war on seven fronts. So many wounded soldiers need medical evacuation and innovative treatment. When I wake up every morning and recite the prayer thanking God that I’m still alive, I add an extra thanks for not having to spend a night in a shelter because of the latest sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.

Here are our Israeli researchers still hard at work, juggling their day jobs with demanding medical and non-medical roles in the IDF.

Doing the test is personal, of course, but it’s also about being an Israeli and wanting to help fix the world. 

To join the studies: call 055-220-4061 for messages, or email fightAD23@gmail.com.

The writer is the Israel director of public relations at Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Her latest book is A Daughter of Many Mothers.