- Two drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease showed promising results.
- Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurologic disorder that causes the brain to shrink (atrophy) and brain cells to die.
- Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia — a continuous decline in thinking, behavioral and social skills that affects a person’s ability to function independently.
- The early signs of the disease include forgetting recent events or conversations.
- As the disease progresses, a person with Alzheimer’s disease will develop severe memory impairment and lose the ability to carry out everyday tasks.
- There is no treatment that cures Alzheimer’s disease or alters the disease process in the brain.
- Alzheimer’s disease affects at least 55 million people worldwide.
- Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia.
- Dementia is the seventh leading cause of death and one of the major causes of disability and dependency among older people globally.
The drugs:
- As with similar antibody-based therapies such as lecanemab, donanemab is not a cure for Alzheimer’s.
- Instead, they are antibodies that target different forms of amyloid-beta (Aβ) proteins that can clump together to form amyloid plaques in people’s brains, resulting in their congnitive decline.
- The drug aims to remove the plaques from the brain and slow the progression of the disease.
SOURCE: THE HINDU, THE ECONOMIC TIMES, PIB