HEALTH: UK REGULATOR APPROVES NEW ALZHEIMER’S DRUG
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Britain’s drugs authority approved a new Alzheimer’s therapy on Thursday that has been demonstrated to halt disease progression, making it the country’s first legal treatment of its kind.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has authorised lecanemab, a drug aimed to reduce cognitive deterioration in adults with the neurological illness.
However, the medicine, produced by Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai, will not be rolled out by the state-run National Health Service (NHS) because it is too expensive, according to its spending watchdog.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) stated that the benefits of lecanemab are “just too small to justify the significant cost to the NHS.”.
Lecanemab was approved in the United States last year, but it was denied by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in late July.
The EMA stated that the drug’s impact was “small” and that the “benefits of treatment are not large enough to outweigh the risks” linked with the medication.
In the United States, the medicine costs approximately £20,000 ($26,000) per patient every year.
However, Alzheimer’s experts and organisations have praised lecanemab as the first licensed treatment that targets the disease’s early stages rather than just its symptoms.
It works by utilising antibodies to bind to and eliminate the proteins that typically accumulate in the brains of persons suffering from Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia.
The medication has been proven to reduce cognitive deterioration by one-quarter in persons in the early stages of the disease.
“Evidence from a clinical trial suggests that people having lecanemab continue to have worsening cognitive function over time, but at a slower rate than people on placebo”, NICE said in its draft recommendations, adding that there was a “lack of evidence on the long-term effects”.
The news of the approval was described as “bittersweet” by Hilary Evans-Newton, chief executive at charity Alzheimer’s Research UK.
“It’s a remarkable achievement that science is now delivering licensed treatments that can slow down the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s, rather than just alleviating its symptoms,” Evans-Newton said.
However, the charity added the treatment would “only be available to those who can afford its steep price tag in the private sector — which will be prohibitive for many”.
Mild dementia caused by Alzheimer’s is thought to be present in around five percent of people over 65 and 25 percent over the age of 80, according to NICE.
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