Alzheimer’s disease is undoubtedly one of the most dreaded diseases of old age. It robs people of their memories, places enormous pressure on caregivers, and places a huge economic burden on individuals and society. Tens of millions of people have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and if predictions are correct, this number will more than double by 2050.
Until recently, there seemed no hope of averting this catastrophe, but rapid medical advances have brought with them the realistic prospect of treating and ultimately eradicating Alzheimer’s disease (see How a New Vaccine Could Eradicate Alzheimer’s Disease ).
One of the first new drugs is already causing a stir, but not always for the right reasons. Last week, the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approved a drug called lecanemab. But NICE, a body charged with assessing whether new treatments are cost-effective, has issued a preliminary decision that taxpayers in England will not fund the drug. A decision for the rest of the UK has yet to be made.
This is obviously a bitter pill to swallow for people with Alzheimer’s and their loved ones. But in the big picture, it’s good news. Lecanemab isn’t a particularly effective drug—its benefits are modest, its side effects are severe, and it’s expensive—but it shows that we now understand the causes of Alzheimer’s and that we can treat them. This is reinforced by the fact that the drug has also been approved in the United States and Japan, despite the European Medicines Agency’s rejection.
As a result, the path is largely clear for the next wave of drugs that target the cause of Alzheimer’s, and they could be ready by around 2030. These aren’t vaccines in the traditional sense, providing immunity against infectious diseases, but they work in much the same way, triggering an immune response that, in this case, targets the misfolded proteins that cause Alzheimer’s symptoms. The first generation of vaccines will be therapeutic, designed to slow or stop the disease, but the next will be preventive, designed to prevent it from developing. Eventually, the only thing that will fade away will be Alzheimer’s itself.
