Reimagining Alzheimer’s (Part 4): Cautious Optimism For A New Alzheimer’s Disease Treatment
(Posted on Saturday, October 22, 2022)
This article is the fourth installment in my series on Alzheimer’s disease. Read more about Alzheimer’s disease in part 1, part 2, and part 3 of the series.
The pharmaceutical and biotech companies, Eisai and Biogen recently revealed promising clinical trial results for a drug that could potentially treat Alzheimer’s disease.
In their clinical study, patients treated with the drug lecanemab experienced a 27% slower cognitive decline from Alzheimer’s disease than control groups. This treatment has been heralded as a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s disease research. Some scientists have cited the study as proof of one of the predominating theories of Alzheimer’s disease and its origins—the amyloid theory.
This leads us to two questions: what makes lecanemab unique and are these clinical trial results truly a historical breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research?