Drug slows Alzheimer’s but can it make a difference?
An experimental Alzheimer’s drug modestly slowed the brain disease’s inevitable worsening — but the anxiously awaited new data leaves unclear how much difference that might make in people’s lives.
Japanese drugmaker Eisai and its US partner Biogen had announced, earlier this fall, that the drug lecanemab appeared to work, a badly needed bright spot after repeated disappointments in the quest for better treatments of the incurable disease.
Late Tuesday, the companies provided full results of the study of nearly 1,800 people in early stages of the mind-robbing disease. The data was presented at an Alzheimer’s meeting in San Francisco and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Lecanemab delayed patients’ worsening by about five months over the course of the 18-month study, Eisai’s Dr. Michael Irizarry told The Associated Press. Also, lecanemab recipients were 31% less likely to advance to the next stage of the disease during the study.
“That translates to more time in earlier stages” when people function better, Irizarry said.
Every two weeks, study participants received intravenous lecanemab or a dummy infusion. Researchers tracked them using an 18-point scale that measures cognitive and functional ability.
The study’s key finding: Those given lecanemab declined more slowly, a difference of not quite half a point on that scale over the 18 months, concluded the research team led by Dr. Christopher van Dyck at Yale University.
Doctors are divided over how much difference that may make for patients and families — especially as the drug carries some worrying potential safety risks including brain swelling.
“It is unlikely that the small difference reported in this trial will be noticeable by individual patients,” said Dr. Madhav Thambisetty of the National Institute on Aging, who noted he wasn’t speaking for the government agency.
He said many researchers believe a meaningful improvement would require at least a difference of a full point on that 18-point scale.
But Dr. Ron Petersen, an Alzheimer’s expert at the Mayo Clinic, said the drug’s effect was “a modest one but I think it’s clinically meaningful” — because even a few months’ delay in progression could give someone a little more time when they’re functioning independently.
The trial is important because it shows a drug that attacks a sticky protein called amyloid — considered one of several culprits behind Alzheimer’s — can delay disease progression, said Maria Carrillo, chief science officer for the Alzheimer’s Association.
“We all understand that this is not a cure and we’re all trying to really grasp what it means to slow Alzheimer’s, because this is a first,” Carrillo said.