New drugs being developed to tackle Alzheimer’s disease will do little to tackle dementia risk “at scale”, researchers have warned. Scientists said there is “a lot of hyperbole” around medications such as lecanemab and donanemab which are said to slow down early stages of Alzheimer’s. They added that rollout of the drugs could “involve considerable resources” which “will be extremely challenging for even the best-funded healthcare systems”.
The drugs, known as amyloid immunotherapy, work with the immune system to clear amyloid protein build-up from the brains of people with early-stage Alzheimer’s. A number of treatments including lecanemab and donanemab are being assessed for approval in the UK by medicine regulators. Writing in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association , the team from Cambridge Public Health said evidence does not make it clear if amyloid immunotherapy “can ever significantly reduce population-level dementia morbidity at scale”.
They also claim results from those involved in trials may not generalise to more complex patients. Lead author Dr Sebastian Walsh, National Institute for Health and Care Research doctoral fellow in public health medicine at Cambridge Public Health, said: “If approved, the drugs are likely to be relevant only for a relatively small cohort of Alzheimer’s patients , so potential recipients will need to undergo a range of assessments before being given access to the drugs. “Pl.