Vaccine may replace blood thinners to reduce stroke recurrence

The vaccine, S100A9, inhibits blood clot formation and, during the study, protected the arteries of treated mice from forming new clots for more than two months, and additionally, worked as well as the oral blood thinner clopidogrel in a major artery, according to Hironori Nakagami, study co-author and professor at Osaka University, in Japan.

"Developing a vaccine to replace and/or compliment daily, oral medications might save many lives and help prevent both secondary strokes and possibly heart attacks," Nakagami said in a press release.

"Many stroke patients don't take their blood thinning drugs as prescribed, which makes it more likely they will have another stroke. This vaccine might one day help solve this issue since it would only need to be injected periodically," Nakagami said.

"We are continuing our research in hopes of being able to start clinical trials between five and ten years from now, but there are differences between mice and humans in how the vaccine will be recognized by the immune system," he said. "We should be able to overcome such problems and believe this vaccine provides a very promising strategy in the secondary prevention of stroke."