Two much-hyped Alzheimer’s drugs may never win NHS approval after an official report claimed they have ‘limited clinical benefit’.
Figures from senior healthcare workers also showed that rolling out the treatments could cost the taxpayer £1 billion a year and that the lives of Alzheimer’s patients could be at risk due to dangerous side effects causing brain haemorrhages.
Studies last year appeared to suggest that the two drugs – lecanemab and donanemab – were able to slow the progression of the degenerative brain disease by as much as a third.
Despite making headlines around the world, independent analysis has since suggested the drugs only slowed the disease for less than a year.
Lecanemab has already been approved in the US and British health regulators are now considering allowing both treatments.
Studies last year appeared to suggest that the two drugs – lecanemab and donanemab – were able to slow the progression of the degenerative brain disease by as much as a third (stock image)
The Mail on Sunday has learned that senior NHS officials have reservations about offering lecanemab and donanemab to British Alzheimer’s patients (stock image)
But The Mail on Sunday has learned that senior NHS officials are expressing reservations about offering lecanemab and donanemab to British Alzheimer’s patients.
An NHS report seen by this newspaper shows that top dementia officials have suggested the side-effect-heavy drugs have only a ‘relatively modest’ benefit.
Experts are now calling on NHS regulators to reject the drugs, which they claim could take up a significant portion of NHS resources and put people’s lives at risk.
There are around a million Alzheimer’s patients in Britain and there are currently no treatments that can slow the disease.
But last year, lecanemab became the first drug that seemed to give patients hope.
The £20,000-a-year treatment works by attacking a toxic protein in the brain called amyloid, which is linked to symptoms of dementia.
A few months later, donanemab, which also targets amyloid, was found to be equally effective.
An NHS report seen by this newspaper shows that top dementia officials have suggested that the side effects of tough drugs have only a ‘relatively modest’ benefit
But experts have noted that the drugs appear to be most effective for patients with the very first form of Alzheimer’s – and as there is no effective test for the disease, hardly any NHS patients are diagnosed at this stage.
The drugs also only seemed to give them nine months of extra health.
Data shows that about one in ten participants experienced swelling in the brain and one in six suffered brain hemorrhages. Three of 1,800 patients in a lecanemab trial also died from suspected side effects.
In an NHS report examining the preparations needed to bring the drugs to market, officials warned that offering them would cost between £500m and £1bn a year.
‘It would be better to sit on our hands and do nothing than to spend a billion pounds on a drug that might not even work,’ says Prof Peter Morgan, a dementia expert at Cardiff University.
‘There is a good chance that these treatments will never be rolled out across the NHS.’