United Kingdom: A new study has stated that the new drug donanemab will become a turning point in the fight against Alzheimer’s. The study’s global trial has confirmed its remarkable ability to slow cognitive decline among patients.
This antibody medication demonstrates efficacy in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, primarily by targeting and eliminating a protein that accumulates in the brains of affected individuals.
Although it doesn’t offer a complete cure, the study’s findings, published in the journal JAMA, represent a major breakthrough, suggesting a new era where Alzheimer’s can be effectively treated.
In the trials, it appears to have slowed the pace of the disease by about a third, allowing people to retain more of their day-to-day lives and tasks.
Donanemab, made by Eli Lilly, works in the same way as lecanemab, developed by Eisai and Biogen, which created headlines around the world when it was proven to slow the disease. Although extremely promising, these drugs are not risk-free treatments.
Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia, one of the world’s biggest health threats. The final trial results of donanemab, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and presented to the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Amsterdam recently, concluded that after 76 weeks of treatment, it had slowed clinical decline by 35.1 percent in people with early Alzheimer’s whose brain scans showed low or medium levels of a protein called tau.
When the results were combined for people who had different levels of this protein, there was a 22.3 percent slowing in disease progression.
That means people with the disease could still go about performing day-to-day tasks. The final results of the trial, known as Trailblazer ALZ-2, examined the safety and efficacy of the drug. Researchers studied almost 1,800 people with early-stage Alzheimer’s. Half of them received a monthly infusion of donanemab, which works by removing a protein called amyloid that builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s, and the other half were given a placebo over 18 months.
Researchers found that among a small number of people in the study, there were some serious side effects, such as brain swelling. However, two volunteers and possibly a third died as a result of dangerous swelling in the brain.
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