Interestingly, we also detected significant reductions of several phosphorylated species of tau in mice immunized with the β-amyloid vaccine, AV-1959R/A, alone (Fig. 6a–c; Additional file 1: Figures S4 and S5), indicating that decreases in Aβ42 also led to a decrease of tau pathology, consistent with previous reports in the 3xTg-AD mouse model [27]. This evidence concerns the gene MAPT and Alzheimer disease.