“The secret of youth” seems to have been revealed by scientists developing an anti-aging vaccine, which, among other things, will also help in the fight against dementia.

“We envision an immune-targeting approach to reduce the threat from our internal enemies that cause our decline with aging. We believe we are closer than ever to making it a reality,” says the team of Israeli researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science.

In their study published in the journal Neuron, they explain that as we age, the immune system begins to malfunction, which leads to inflammation and an increase in so-called “zombie cells”.

These cells are damaged, but they refuse to die.

According to the scientific team, the brain is an organ particularly affected by this ‘immune ageing’ – making it vulnerable to damage that leads to dementia-like symptoms.

The researchers are seeking, summarizes the Daily Mail, to identify a specific type of protein that could be used to trigger an immune response in the brain – called an epitope – which could “act as an anti-aging vaccine”.