How much progress has been made against Alzheimer’s disease?

Paris: After decades of unsuccessful research, two new drugs and an innovative blood test have recently given Alzheimer’s patients to hope to fight behind the weakening disease – but they remain questions about their effectiveness.

Any path to a treatment also remains unclear for Alzheimer’s, which represents about 70% of cases of dementia worldwide and is the leading cause of death among the elderly.

Before Alzheimer’s day on Sunday, here is what you need to know about recent developments in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the disease.

How effective are new drugs?

Billions of dollars have been spent trying to find treatment for Alzheimer’s disease over the decades, but these efforts have been stubbornly dumped – at least until recently.

Eli Lilly’s Donanemab and Biogen and Eisai’s Lecanemab are the first treatments to prove to be significantly slowing the evolution of Alzheimer’s.

But precise treatments are only moderately effective and work only for patients at an early stage of the disease. There may also be serious side effects, including potentially fatal brain bleeding.

This has caused a debate over whether the benefits of drugs compensate for risks, leading to national health regulators taking different positions.

Lecanemab, which is sold under the name Leqembi, has been approved in many countries, including the United States.

However, French health authorities informed the state insurance system not to refund the payment for the drug.

It followed in the footsteps of the United Kingdom’s state health service, whose spectrum spending said this year that both new Alzheimer’s drugs did not show enough benefits given their price.

What about early diagnosis?

Another debate on Alzheimer’s research – and which has also seen a growing gap between Europe and the United States – revolves around how to diagnose the disease.

The standard method of diagnosing Alzheimer’s required an invasive and expensive lumbar perforation, which may exclude some patients at risk.

But a simple blood test has recently been developed that detects “biological markers” of the disease.

The US authorities have authorized the test since May, but Europe has not yet approved any Alzheimer’s blood tests, one of which has recently begun a national clinical trial in Britain.

The question is whether the blood test will always be enough to diagnose the disease with confidence.

Last year, the US non -profit organization did not change its criteria to say that biomarkers were only sufficient.

But in Europe, most experts believe that thorough clinical trials will be needed to confirm a person’s cognitive and functional decline.

Many patients “with abnormal biomarkers never develop dementia,” said Dutch neurologist Edo Richard AFP.

Richard is also skeptical of Alzheimer’s two new drugs.

The two issues are linked because the supporters of the drugs believe that they are able to diagnose the disease before the notable symptoms occur could enhance the effect of treatments.

Can Alzheimer’s be prevented?

A consensus area is what makes people risk more of taking Alzheimer’s disease and dementia wider.

Almost half of the cases are associated with factors such as obesity, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical inactivity and hearing loss, according to a revision of experts in Lancet last year.

There is a growing research that seeks to determine whether programs that encourage people to exercise and eat better are effective in fighting Alzheimer’s.

But so far the randomized controlled tests “targeting these risk factors have shown that they are not limited to any effect on cognitive decline or dementia,” Richard said.

A recent Jama study found that the cognitive decline of Alzheimer’s patients slowed slightly after two years of intensive support to be healthier.

For people suffering from Alzheimer’s and their families, this kind of progress may not look very much, French epidemiologist Cecilia Samieri has recognized at a conference this month.

But compared to the point where things were just a few years ago, “it’s already huge,” Samieri said.

He said that he believed that only 10 to 15 years tests could really show how effective such interventions could be against long -term diseases such as Alzheimer’s.