Much-hyped Alzheimer's drugs do not help patients, review finds

LONDON

Drugs once hailed as a breakthrough in the fight against Alzheimer's disease do not meaningfully help patients, a major review found on April 16.

The review by the Cochrane organization, which is considered the gold standard for analyzing existing evidence, looked at drugs that target a plaque called amyloids which builds up in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

Researchers have long sought a way to eliminate this plaque, believing it could be the cause of the most common form of dementia which affects millions of elderly people every year.

After decades of costly yet unsuccessful research, two anti-amyloid drugs called lecanemab and donanemab were initially hailed as gamechangers that finally offered a way to slow the progress of the debilitating disease.

Both drugs were approved by the United States and European Union over the last few years.

However, concerns about their effectiveness, cost and side effects including an increased risk of brain swelling and bleeding have since prompted caution. State-run health services in the U.K. and France have refused to cover the drugs.

The new Cochrane review combined data from 17 clinical trials that included a total of more than 20,000 people with mild cognitive impairment or early dementia.

While early trials suggested the drugs made a statistically significant difference, this did not translate into "something clinically meaningful for patients," lead study author Francesco Nonino of Italy's IRCCS institute told a press conference.

Brain scans showed that the drugs successfully removed amyloids, the researchers emphasized.

This means "the idea that removing amyloids will benefit patients was refuted by our results," said study co-author Edo Richard of Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands.