Last month, a wave of excitement swept through the world of Alzheimer’s research after Eli Lilly published results of a trial of their drug, donanemab.
They found that the drug slowed cognitive decline in 47% of those who took the drug, vis-à-vis 29% who got a placebo. ‘Slowed’ here meant staving off the disease for six months to a year, when judged by multiple factors.
Donanemab, while still in trials, follows on the heels of another drug, lecanemab, from Eisai, a Japanese pharmaceutical company that was fast-tracked by United States Food and Drug Administration. A third drug called aducanumab was approved by the FDA in 2021, but as an analysis in the JAMA Neurology reported last October, donanemab and aducanumab were not “cost effective,” given their cost and the limited improvement in the quality of life.
