A New Drug Could Slow Alzheimer ’s Disease, Data Show

Over the past few years, Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers have been on a roller-coaster ride full of highs and lows in the search for treatments—and new research presents another emotionally thrilling loop. In data presented at the annual Clinical Trials in Alzheimer’s Disease meeting in San Francisco, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists from the Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai showed that its drug for Alzheimer’s led to improvements in people’s cognitive functions. The improvements weren’t huge, or even the first to be reported with an Alzheimer’s medication. But they do come from the most comprehensive and advanced study on Alzheimer’s patients to date. In a phase 3 trial, Eisai researchers showed that people taking the drug lecanemab, which targets the amyloid protein that builds up in the brain during Alzheimer’s, slowed cognitive decline by 27%, as measured by standard clinical tests, compared to people assigned to a placebo. Those results mean that lecanemab is a disease-modifying drug: one that impacts the course of Alzheimer’s, rather than simply treat its symptoms, which all but one of the approved drugs for the condition do. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] More from TIME [video id=W5jcvwLu autostart="viewable"] But as encouraging as the results are, they come at a bewildering time for the Alzheimer’s community, which has been buoyed by hopeful...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Disease healthscienceclimate Source Type: news