Hope for the sick and their loved ones. The US health authorities authorized this Friday a new drug against Alzheimer’s. Despite its sky-high price, the treatment is highly anticipated after the failed launch of a previous drug with a similar mechanism a year and a half ago.
• What is this new drug?
The treatment, which will be marketed under the name Leqembi, consists of an active ingredient called Lecanemab that acts on deposits of the beta-amyloid protein. It must be administered intravenously twice a month.
The drug is now recommended by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for patients who have not yet reached an advanced stage of the disease. About 100,000 people could receive it within three years in the United States.
• What does it promise?
The new treatment, developed by a Japanese pharmaceutical company, should make it possible to reduce the cognitive deterioration of patients suffering from this neurodegenerative disease that is Alzheimer’s.
Clinical trials conducted on nearly 1,800 people, the results of which were recently published in a scientific journal, show that the drug reduces this cognitive decline by 27%. The course of the disease eventually prevents patients from speaking correctly and performing daily tasks.
• Why is it a new development?
It is the first time that an Alzheimer’s drug has obtained such conclusive results in clinical trials.
The treatment represents “an important step forward in our battle to effectively treat Alzheimer’s disease,” the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in a press release.
Ces progrès sont particulièrement attendedus après l’échec d’un précédent médicament lanzamé en juin 2021. the illness.
With the aging population in the United States, approximately 6.5 million people currently have the disease in the country.
• What question marks remain about the treatment?
Some side effects have been observed during clinical trials, some of the treated patients suffered brain haemorrhages. At least one person who received the treatment has died.
“It remains to be shown whether Lecanemab will really change the rules of the game, as some say,” some experts ask in the scientific journal. the lancet beginning of December.
The price of the drug, 26,500 dollars a year, also raises questions, while Medicare, the health insurance reserved for the elderly, has already expressed its reluctance to reimburse it.
Source: BFM TV
