A study claims that a twice-daily tablet used regularly by the NHS could slow or even reverse certain forms of incurable dementia.
During a 2015 trial, nilotinib, a blood cancer drug, was previously shown to improve movement and mental function in a small group of patients with dementia related to Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies.
For some patients, the drug, which costs £2,000 a year, even appeared to reverse dementia symptoms: one woman regained the ability to feed herself and three non-verbal patients began to speak again.
Now, a larger trial involving 43 participants has confirmed that nilotinib can improve balance, cognition and memory in patients with Lewy body dementia, a form of dementia caused by protein deposits known as Lewy bodies. that develop in the brain.
Experts believe that nilotinib, which works by blocking the production of new cells in the body, can enter the brain and reduce the buildup of these toxic proteins.
A new daily tablet available through the NHS could slow or even reverse certain forms of cancer (file photo)
A similar effect is thought to be seen in people with Parkinson’s dementia (a form of memory and cognition loss caused by a degenerative brain disease), as these patients also experience accumulations of Lewy bodies.
Significantly, some experts even argue that the pill could slow the progression of Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, which despite billions of pounds of funding and decades of research remains incurable.
“It appears that nilotinib is able to modify some of the key abnormal proteins in the brain that cause dementia, stopping cognitive decline in patients,” says Dr. John-Paul Taylor, professor of translational dementia at the University of Newcastle and specialist in dementia with Lewy bodies.
Dementia affects around one million people in the UK. Most of them suffer from Alzheimer’s, while around 100,000 suffer from Lewy body dementia and approximately 90,000 suffer from Parkinson’s dementia.
All forms are incurable and, until recently, there were no medications that could stop it.
In the past two years, two new Alzheimer’s drugs have been shown in trials to slow progression by up to a third. These infusions, lecanemab and donanemab, attack a protein in the brain called amyloid plaque.
However, earlier this year the NHS announced it would not fund either treatment as the benefit was not considered significant enough to justify the high cost.
There are also concerns about the safety of both drugs after it was revealed that several patients experienced dangerous brain bleeds, leading to several deaths.
However, the latest study, conducted at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, opens the possibility of finding a safer and cheaper alternative.
The NHS currently uses nilotinib for chronic myeloid leukemia, a rare type of cancer that affects the bone marrow and white blood cells. The medicine is taken in the form of capsules twice a day.
While all patients were considered to have mild to moderate dementia at the start of the study, those taking nilotinib saw their cognitive assessment score (which measures attention, memory, language and orientation) improve by nearly 15 percent .
Caregivers of patients taking nilotinib also reported improvement in behavioral symptoms such as irritability and apathy.
Some argue that the pill could even slow the development of Alzheimer’s, for which there is currently no cure (file photo)
And the nilotinib group experienced 70 percent fewer falls, which researchers believe may be due to their better cognition.
Crucially, participants did not report any adverse reactions to the medication.
“All the biomarkers and all the clinical and cognitive outcomes were moving in the right direction,” said study investigator Dr. Raymond Scott Turner, a professor of neurology at Georgetown.
Professor Taylor says: ‘Nilotinib is a very intriguing, positive and promising signal for a group of patients with very few treatment options.
‘If you take a disease-modifying drug, usually it may not make you better, but it won’t make you worse either. The interesting thing about this one is that not only are you not getting worse, you’re actually getting better.’