Researchers have reported promising results for a new Alzheimer’s drug. We take a close look at the evidence, to see whether it might offer a new option for treatment.
What is Known At this Point in Time for the Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease ?
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia in older people. If someone has dementia, they have trouble with memory and thinking. Their behavior often changes, and eventually they become unable to look after themselves.
There are several treatments to help with the symptoms of dementia, although none of them can cure it. Drugs called cholinesterase inhibitors seem to slow the progress of dementia in some people. However, there’s been a lot of controversy about how well these drugs work.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is the organisation that decides which treatments can be offered on the NHS. NICE says that three different cholinesterase inhibitors can be used on the NHS, but only for people with moderate Alzheimer’s disease. The drugs aren’t recommended for people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
Dementia is likely to be a big problem in future years, as people are living longer on average, so are more likely to get dementia. Doctors are looking for more treatments that may be useful for dementia. One drug being studied at the moment is called dimebon. It’s an antihistamine that was once used to treat allergies. But it was dropped when other allergy drugs were developed. Now, doctors are looking to see if it’s helpful for Alzheimer’s disease.
What does the new study say?
Dimebon worked better than a dummy (placebo) drug for people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease, over six months to a year. People taking dimebon had improved test scores for thinking and memory. People taking the placebo had scores that got worse over the course of the study.
Researchers found the same results using several different tests, all of which looked mainly at how well people could think and remember things.
Tell me more about the study’s findings
The improvement in test scores happened mostly in the first three to six months of the study. Towards the end of 12 months, the average test scores for people taking dimebon had started to go down. But, because the test scores for people who took a placebo went down steadily during the whole 12 months, the people taking dimebon did much better by comparison at the end of the year.
It’s hard to know exactly what the test scores mean. The main test used has a maximum of 70 points. People taking dimebon did about 4 points better than people taking placebo after six months, and 7 points better after a year. That’s a big enough difference for a doctor to notice. But it’s hard to say what that means for the patient. For example, we don’t know whether it would mean someone could stay in their own home, rather than needing care in a nursing home.
People in the study didn’t get many serious side effects from dimebon. A dry mouth was the most common side effect.
Where does the study come from?
The study was carried out in Moscow, Russia, but overseen by researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. It was published in The Lancet, a medical journal owned by a publishing company called Elsevier. It was funded by Medivation, the US company that makes and wants to sell dimebon. It’s quite common for medicine manufacturers to fund medical trials of their drugs.
How reliable are the findings?
The trial was carried out carefully, and over enough time that it should show a real result. It was a type of study called a randomised controlled trial, which is the best sort of study to see if one drug works better than another, or better than a placebo. However, there are some things that should make us cautious.
- It’s not a very big study. Only 183 patients took part.
- All the patients were in Russian hospitals. Treatment of Alzheimer’s disease is quite different in Russia, compared to the UK. People tend to be in big wards, in hospitals, and the drugs used in the UK are not widely available. So it’s hard to know whether these results would be the same if the drug was tested in the UK.
The study didn’t compare dimebon with existing drugs for Alzheimer’s disease. It seems to be better than no treatment at all, but we can’t say whether it’s better or worse than the drugs we have already.
What does this mean for me?
If you have Alzheimer’s, or you are caring for someone with the disease, you’ll probably be keen to hear about any potential new treatment. This new study gives some hope that dimebon might be a useful option. But we need to see more research to be sure. Even if more studies show it works well, it’s likely to be several years before dimebon is available as a treatment for Alzheimer’s.
Current Choice Actions for Friends & Family Suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease Dementia
There’s no need to take any action as a result of this study. If you care for someone with Alzheimer’s disease and are worried about their treatment, see your doctor. There are currently three drugs approved in the UK to treat moderate Alzheimer’s. They’re called donepezil, galantamine and rivastigmine.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/besttreatments/2008/jul/18/new-alzheimers-treatment-tested
http://www.dimebonalzheimers.com
