New Drug Slows Cognitive Decline in Alzheimer’s patients

The US food and drug administration has not approved any new medication for Alzheimer’s disease since 2003. The new study which was published in the New England Journal of medicine shows positive results by Eli Lilly and Company. The drug is called donanemab and the study is known as TRAILBLAZER-ALZ.For experimenting, nearly 275 patients with  Alzheimer’s disease were divided into half. The first half received the drug for 76 weeks as part of the trial, while the other half received a placebo. Even people with early symptomatic  disease participated.

Daniel Skovronsky, M.D., PhD. Lilly’s chief scientific officer and president of Lilly Research Laboratories said that at the first late stage of the study in disease to meet its primary endpoint at the analysis. Donanemab can become an important treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Donanemab is an antibody treatment that targets a modified form of amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide which is a plaque that accumulates in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.

In the early clinical trial in the amyloid plaque levels of those receiving the experimental drug achieved a negative status. In other terms, the level remained unchanged. Daniel skovronsky also added that the treatment also showed positive results like slowing cognitive and functional decline, but also very substantial clearance of amyloid plaques and slowing of spread of the pathology.

Researchers monitored memory and the ability to perform daily tasks. They discovered that the drug seems to slow cognitive decline by about 32%. Nearly 40% of participants treated with donanemab achieved amyloid negativity as early as six months after starting treatment, and 68% reached this goal by 18 months in.