In the fight against Alzheimer's the new drug donanemab has given promising results in its global trial making it a new way to treat the disease and slow down the cognitive decline among patients.
Donanemab is a new drug that is considered to be the turning point for the treatment of Alzheimer's as the global trial has confirmed that it slows down the cognitive decline of patients. This is an antibody medicine which helps patients who are in the early stages of the disease as it clears the build-up of protein in the brain which occurs in cases of Alzheimer's.
This drug is not called a cure for Alzheimer's, but rather a way to treat the disease and slow the process of cognitive decline among the patients.
According to the reports donanemab works for Alzheimer's disease only and not in other types of dementia like vascular dementia.
The reports have said that it has been observed among the patients in the trials that the pace of the disease has slowed down by a third and it has allowed them to remember more of their day-to-day lives and activities.
One of the patients who took part in the trials, Mike Colley, 80, spoke to BBC, he said he was, "one of the luckiest people you'll ever meet". Colley gets his infusion once every month at a clinic in London and participated in the trial quite soon after his family recognised him as having trouble with memory and decision-making.
His son Mark told the media, "Seeing him struggle with processing information and solving problems was very hard. But I think the decline is reaching a plateau now." Mike Colley also mentioned that he feels more confident every day.
The results of the new drug donanemab have been promising but it is not completely risk-free.
In the trial, a third of the patients experienced brain swelling as a common side-effect and it is reported that for most of them, it resolved without causing any major symptoms. Meanwhile two volunteers and possibly a third lost their lives due to excessive brain swelling.
The researchers in the donanemab trial examined 1,736 people aged 60 to 85 with early-stage Alzheimer's. Among them, half received a monthly infusion while the other half received a placebo drug for a period of 18 months.
The findings of the trial began with some patients receiving meaningful benefits from the drug. Reports said that the patients who were in the earlier stages and had less brain amyloid at baseline benefitted more as observed by their brain scans.
The patients who received the drug were able to remember more about their daily life activities and even discuss current events, answer phone calls and pursue hobbies.
The disease's progression was reduced by 20–30% overall and by 30–40% in a group of patients who researchers believed were more likely to respond, as measured by what they could still accomplish on a daily basis.
There are risk factors in the trial which the patients need to be aware of. Half of the patients who received donanemab were able to stop taking it after a year as the protein build-up in their brains cleared up sufficiently.