New Alzheimer’s wonder drug destroys toxic clumps in brain & slows down disease – but will it get the NHS green light?
SCIENTISTS this week hailed a “new era” in tackling dementia after a second drug was proven to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s.
By breaking down clumps of toxic proteins that build up in the brain of early-stage patients, the drug Donanemab was able to halt the advance of the deadly disease.
Half of patients’ symptoms in a trial did not get worse for at least a year.
Those taking the drug scored 35 per cent better in tests after a year compared with people not given it, and were more able to carry on with daily life.
UK charity the Alzheimer’s Society proclaimed the landmark results as “the beginning of the end of Alzheimer’s disease”.
Dr Marc Busche, from the UK Dementia Research Institute, added: “This therapy has the potential to significantly improve patients’ and families’ lives today.”
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One other drug also succeeded, with results from that trial revealed last year.
Dr Cath Mummery, a brain surgeon at University College London Hospitals, said: “This result confirms that we are now entering the treatment era of Alzheimer’s."
Below, Clare O’Reilly shares the touching story of her dad’s battle.
MY dad Mick, 76, wakes up frequently at night.
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He stays put in bed, scared in the darkness, not knowing where he is, who he is or what’s going on.
He pulls the covers up over his head forming a cave-like cocoon, trying not to wake my mum Irene, his wife of 51 years.
Sometimes it comes back to him that he’s at home and safe in bed, and sometimes he falls asleep again still panicked and scared, his heart racing.
Dad told me this just days after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia in September 2020.
He’d been having episodes like this, having been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment a decade or so before.
So while the words Alzheimer’s and dementia were a devastating shock for us, secretly he’d known — and hidden — the confusion he’d started to live with.
Since his diagnosis in lockdown, his condition has worsened, and I think frequently about the disorientation this cruel disease causes.
His decline has felt slow during some periods and quicker during others, but the news that US pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly has announced a new wonder drug slowing this decline, and in some cases halting it completely, is both incredibly exciting and bittersweet for my gentle soul of a father who made up a new bedtime story every night for years when I was a child.
The Donanemab trial involved 1,736 people aged 60 to 85 with early stage Alzheimer’s and compared the progress of their dementia over 18 months with and without the new medicine.
It found people with milder symptoms benefited more from taking Donanemab but those in worse condition also saw improvements.
The past two-and-a-half years have rocked our family and left us all clinging to memories of a man we used to know.
Dad was a hairdresser before an earlier epilepsy diagnosis meant he could not work any more.
He delighted in our weekly trips to the library with my brother Michael when we were growing up in the Eighties.
We’d spend hours perusing the aisles before sharing a KitKat in the cafe. He’d pore over books about sculpture, philosophy, history, art and, until his diagnosis, was a Trivial Pursuit legend.
Which is why when he was diagnosed and told me the story about waking in the night, I felt like I was losing him even though he was still physically in front of me.
Our roles reversed as I reassured him it would be OK, that we’d get through it, and he didn’t have to be scared any more.
The hundreds of books on the shelves at my childhood home in Solihull are unfamiliar to him now, as are the memories of our trips to the library.
The volumes of poetry he loved so much just gather dust.
Gone also are the days we used to make bread together, him teaching me the different ways to plait it while he’d make bread rolls small enough for a single slice of cucumber, which was always my favourite.
I made sure I wrote down his legendary apple pie and meatloaf recipes when he was first diagnosed too, so I can continue to make them as the once-familiar list of ingredients and quantities deserts him.
Dad’s diagnosis brought me to my knees.
If he’d been able to follow the hammer blow by telling me there was a medication he could take to halt or stop it, so much of the past three years would have been very different.
Don’t get me wrong, some days are better than others, but some days he forgets the simplest of words, pasta being a recent betrayal by his once brilliant mind.
His world is now smaller too — crowds unnerve him, the local park we used to walk round takes it out of him now there’s such a sensory overload with birdsong and children playing.
It’s not as calming as it used to be for him.
Scientists have hailed Donanemab as being “historic”, putting the degenerative condition into a kind of remission and I’m delighted, because this is a path I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
Dementia is the leading cause of death in Britain, and Alzheimer’s causes more than two thirds of cases.
Around 900,000 Brits have dementia and this is set to rise beyond a million by 2025.
There is currently no cure or way of slowing the fatal disease, which robs sufferers of their memory, intelligence and physical strength.
UK scientists warn the NHS must now gear up to get drugs to patients.
Dr Richard Oakley, from the Alzheimer’s Society, added: “We need decisions as quickly as possible from the regulators but that’s not the end of the story.
“We can’t end up in a situation where there are new drugs but people can’t get access to them early in their dementia when they work best. We need more accurate, earlier dementia diagnosis in the NHS.”
MICK says: “Donanemab sounds a bit like a word that’d give you a high score in Scrabble, but anything that will stop the memory loss and confusion these conditions cause is great news.
“I’d definitely have tried it and jumped at the opportunity when I was diagnosed. I wish it wasn’t too late for me now, but you can’t win’ em all, as I always tell Clare.
"It’s horrible experiencing memory loss and it’s scary, too.
"You are looking at something you know and it looks familiar, but you can’t find the word for it.
"It’s like everything gets jumbled and like a muddy pond — the more you try to find the word, the murkier everything becomes.
“You want to express yourself but you can’t, like your mind is betraying you and you are powerless.
“You start to give up, too. You try so hard to remember and you never can, so you want to stop trying.
“Clare has told me that some types of dementia and Alzheimer’s are hereditary, so knowing that if it ever happens to her and there’s a medicine she can take to stop it, is nothing short of miraculous.
“It’s a lonely diagnosis. I wouldn’t want her to have the thoughts I’ve had, and the confusion.
“No one should have to live with this, but it’s harder for my family than it is for me I think.”
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT DONANEMAB
WHAT IS DONANEMAB? Donanemab is a drug containing immune system proteins called antibodies that attack and break down toxic clumps that grow in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
It is given through an intravenous injection to patients with early signs of dementia. Trials have shown it slows down damage done to the brain.
WHAT DID THE LATEST TRIAL FIND? The study involved 1,736 people aged 60 to 85 with early symptoms of Alzheimer’s. It found that, over 18 months, patients taking Donanemab had a slower mental decline and less severe dementia than who did not take it.
WHY IS IT A BIG DEAL? This is only the second time a drug has been proven to slow down Alzheimer’s disease in humans.
Donanemab works the same way as the other drug, lecanemab, which tells scientists the approach they have been working on for 30 years is the right one.
They can now focus on fine-tuning these therapies and getting them rolled out to millions of patients worldwide.
WHEN WILL PATIENTS ACTUALLY GET IT? The Alzheimer’s Society estimates 2025 is the best case scenario in the UK.
Medicine regulator the MHRA must decide if it is as safe and effective as the manufacturer claims.
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It must then get a green light from NHS spending watchdog NICE, who will assess if it is worth the cost, which is likely to be astronomical.
Also, the NHS must improve dementia services to diagnose people early enough to be treated, which will be hard with the current backlogs facing the health service.
BREW BRAIN GAIN
TEA and coffee helps keep your brain healthy, a study suggests.
The hot drinks are said to be full of health-boosting polyphenols which keep nerve cells in good shape.
The findings are from data on 35,000 Brits. Those who drank two or three cups of coffee or more than four cups of tea had a thicker layer of nerve fibres in their eyes. That, in turn, was seen as a sign of brain health.
But Dr Lisa Zhuoting Zhu, of Australia’s Centre for Eye Research, said good quality coffee was a must — instant has been linked to brain decline.