Why Aren’t New Alzheimer’s Drugs More Popular?
Dementia treatments are vastly underused, for some very good reasons.
Dementia remains one of the most feared end-of-life conditions. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common type, is currently erasing the memories and personalities of at least five million Americans, most of them 65 and older, and many more are in earlier stages of this mental degradation. Alzheimer’s will afflict one out of every five women, and one out of every 10 men during their lifetimes. Yet only a few thousand individuals have started taking the only available medications that could change the progression of their dementia.
Drug companies introduced the first medications to treat the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease 30 years ago. These drugs produced small reductions in the rate of deterioration from the disease.
But it wasn’t until 2021 that the FDA approved the first medication, aducanamab (Aduhelm), that could actually reverse molecular pathways leading to brain cell death and the disruption of brain circuits involved in memory, attention, language, and judgment. Aducanamab thus became the first medication that had a chance of altering the course of Alzheimer’s disease itself. A second medication, lecanemab (Leqembi), from this class of drugs was approved in 2023. Other drugs that work similarly…
