Global Trial For Drug to Prevent Alzheimer’s
It is not setting out to test whether the debilitating disease can be cured, but whether it can be prevented from occurring in the first place. That really would be good news.
Screening for the trial has just begun in Europe. Healthy people aged 55 to 80 with a heightened risk of Alzheimer’s are being invited to join a world-first trial to explore whether an experimental drug can prevent them from developing the disease. Potential participants (researchers are looking for 1,600 people) take memory tests before being offered blood tests to see whether they have p-tau217 - a biomarker that points to a heightened risk of Alzheimer’s. The British Medical Journal notes that the treatment has already been hailed in the media as a “game changer” that raises the prospect of “statins for the brain” being routinely offered to people in midlife.
The trial will investigate whether prescribing an experimental drug - trontinemab - to participants with elevated levels of p-tau217 can stop them from developing dementia. It comes after research found the drug cleared amyloid plaques in 90 percent of people with early-stage Alzheimer’s, thus removing a defining characteristic of the disease.
“The idea that someone alive today could become the first person cured of Alzheimer’s disease would have seemed unimaginable not long ago,” said Hilary Evans-Newton CBE, chief executive of Alzheimer’s Research UK. “Today … it’s a future we know is within reach.”
Prof Ramin Nilforooshan, consultant psychiatrist and chief investigator for the trial, told the BBC that research had "for decades" focused on treating Alzheimer's after symptoms appeared. The trial "addresses a different question, whether we can act earlier, before symptoms begin", he said. "We are very excited for the potential to help millions of people affected by Alzheimer's disease."
