Groundbreaking New Alzheimer's Drug Slows Progression Of The Disease, Finds Study

A new and powerful drug that has been found to slow the progress of Alzheimer's has been hailed as a ‘turning point' in the fight against the disease, the New York Post reported. According to the results of a late-stage clinical trial, the experimental Alzheimer's drug called Donanemab from drugmaker Eli Lilly helped slow cognitive decline in patients in the early stages of the illness.

The medication had a successful clinical trial and is expected to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration this fall. As per Metro, the drug targets the build-up of amyloid protein in the brain and was found to slow ‘clinical decline' in patients by up to 35%.

When the results were combined for people who had different levels of this protein, there was a 22.3% slowing in disease progression.

The drug works best for those in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's. Patients with more advanced disease showed little to no benefit compared to those who received the placebo. Meanwhile, side effects of the drug were serious in some cases and included brain swelling and brain bleeds.

Alzheimer's Research UK said that ''we're entering a new era where Alzheimer's disease could become treatable.''

This is “just the opening chapter in a new era of molecular therapies for Alzheimer's disease,” Dr. Gil Rabinovici, director of the University of California San Francisco's Memory and Aging Center, wrote in an editorial for JAMA.

"Finally there's some hope, right, that we can talk about," Lilly's Dr. John Sims told reporters Monday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Amsterdam.

"We don't cure the disease. Diabetes doesn't have a cure either. It doesn't mean you can't have very meaningful treatments for patients," he said. 

Previous drugs prescribed for Alzheimer's only treated the symptoms of the disease, rather than the cause.

Another Alzheimer's drug Leqembi was recently approved by Food and Drug Administration. Both Leqembi and Donanemab work by clearing buildups of a protein in the brain called amyloid, a hallmark of Alzheimer's.

About 6.7 million adults ages 65 and older in the U.S. have Alzheimer's disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association.