What drugs have been evaluated this year?
This year the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body that decides which treatments are available on the NHS, has rejected two new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, lecanemab and donanemab, arguing that the small benefit they may provide does not outweigh the large cost of providing these drugs. This is partly due to the need to intensively monitor patients for side effects such as brain swelling and bleeding.1 Both drugs work by targeting β amyloid proteins in the brain that are thought to cause the disease.
Although these drugs can still be provided through private healthcare providers, because they have been authorised by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the approximate price tag of £20 000 a year means few people will be likely to be able to get them.
However, their approval has sparked hope that new and effective drugs for Alzheimer’s disease are on the horizon. David Thomas, head of policy and public affairs at Alzheimer’s Research UK said, “Though far from perfect, these drugs open the door for the development of safer, more effective treatments that will slow, stop, and reverse all forms of dementia.”
Thomas added, “This means developing therapies that can remove harmful proteins in the brain, protect brain cells by making them more resilient, and restore damage that has been done. In the future, …
