Promising Alzheimer ’s therapy and related drugs shrink brains

A class of Alzheimer’s drugs that aims to slow cognitive decline, including the antibody lecanemab that was granted accelerated approval in the United States in January , can cause brain shrinkage, researchers report in a new analysis. Although scientists and drug developers have documented this loss of brain volume in clinical trial participants for years, the scientific review, published yesterday in Neurology , is the first to look at data across numerous studies. It also links the brain shrinkage to a better known side effect of the drugs, brain swelling, which often presents without symptoms. “We don’t fully know what these changes might imply,” says Jonathan Jackson, a cognitive neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital. But, “These data are extremely concerning, and it’s likely these changes are detrimental.” The analysis, which found that trial participants taking these Alzheimer’s drugs often developed more brain shrinkage than when they were on a placebo, alarmed Scott Ayton, a neuroscientist at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne, Australia, who led the work. “We’re talking about the possibility of brain damage” from treatment, says Ayton, who was invited by Eisai to join an advisory board on lecanemab’s rollout in Australia if the drug is approved there. “I find it very peculiar that these data, which are very important, have been completely ignored by the fi...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news