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A new Alzheimer's drug may hit the market soon. Here's what you need to know: I spent yesterday watching the FDA #AdComm for Eli Lilly and Company's anti-amyloid drug #donanemab. While the eleven-person committee unanimously recommended the drug for approval there were still some lingering questions. The FDA will make their final decision in the coming weeks. Donanemab doesn't stop Alzheimer's disease, the evidence from the Phase 3 clinical trial suggests that it might slow its progression a bit. The trial enrolled patients based on tau levels, and excluded those with no or very low levels of tau in the brain. People with medium levels of tau seemed to benefit most from the treatment. Advisory committee members argued it wouldn't be practical or useful to require people to take a tau PET scan before being prescribed the drug. Unlike Leqembi, patients who are on the drug stop receiving it once the #amyloid plaques in the brain are cleared. In practice, this means doctors need to figure out when to time an amyloid PET scan to measure if these plaques have been cleared. Some of the members on the committee where uncertain over how much patients with two copies of the #APOE4 gene might benefit from the drug. There's also still uncertainty over why people taking the drug seemed to experience more brain shrinkage than those on placebo, even if they experienced a statistically significant reduction in symptoms and amyloid. Read more Being Patient
🧠 Big news in the fight against Alzheimer's! 💊 Today, the FDA’s eleven-person advisory committee unanimously voted that Eli Lilly and Company’s anti-amyloid Alzheimer's #drug #donanemab was effective, and that the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks for people with the earliest stages of #Alzheimers disease. The agency is expected to make their final decision on approving the drug in the next few weeks. Read the full article from Being Patient's Simon Spichak👇 #AlzheimersDrugs #AlzheimersDisease #AlzheimersAwareness #BrainHealth
