Two much-hyped Alzheimer’s drugs may never gain NHS approval after an official report claimed they have “limited clinical benefit”.
The elderly health service figures also raised concerns that implementing the treatments could cost the taxpayer £1 billion a year, as well as endangering the lives of Alzheimer’s patients due to the dangerous side effects they cause. cerebral hemorrhages.
Studies last year appeared to suggest that the two drugs, lecanemab and donanemab, were capable of slowing the progress of the degenerative brain disease by up to a third.
However, despite making headlines around the world, an independent analysis has suggested the drugs could only slow the disease for less than a year.
Lecanemab has already been approved in the US and UK health regulators are now considering allowing both treatments.
Studies last year appeared to suggest that the two drugs, lecanemab and donanemab, were capable of slowing the progress of the degenerative brain disease by up to a third (file image)
The Mail on Sunday has learned that senior NHS officials have concerns about offering lecanemab and donanemab to British Alzheimer’s patients (file image)
But The Mail on Sunday has learned that senior NHS officials have concerns about offering lecanemab and donanemab to British Alzheimer’s patients.
An NHS report seen by this newspaper reveals that leading dementia doctors have suggested drugs with many side effects have only a “relatively modest” benefit.
Experts are now calling on NHS regulators to reject the drugs, which they say could consume a significant amount of NHS resources and put people’s lives at risk.
There are around a million Alzheimer’s sufferers in the UK and there are currently no treatments capable of stopping the disease.
But last year lecanemab became the first drug that seemed to give hope to sufferers.
The treatment, which costs £20,000 a year, works by attacking a toxic protein in the brain called amyloid, which is linked to dementia symptoms.
Several months later, donanemab, which also targets amyloid, was shown to be equally effective.
An NHS report seen by this newspaper reveals that leading dementia doctors have suggested drugs with many side effects have only a “relatively modest” benefit.
But experts have pointed out that the drugs appear to be most effective for patients with the earliest form of Alzheimer’s and, as there is no effective test for the disease, almost no NHS patients are diagnosed at this stage.
The medications also seemed to give them only nine more months of good health.
The data shows that about one in ten participants experienced inflammation in the brain and one in six had brain bleeds. Three patients out of 1,800 in a lecanemab trial also died from suspected side effects.
In an NHS report exploring the preparation needed to launch the drugs, officials warned that delivering them would cost between £500m and £1bn a year.
“It would be better to sit back and do nothing than spend a billion pounds on a drug that may not even work,” says Professor Peter Morgan, a dementia expert at Cardiff University.
“There is a strong possibility that these treatments will never be implemented in the NHS.”