Solanezumab, a drug from the American laboratories Eli Lilly would be effective in delaying the progress of the degeneration of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
The researchers carried out a clinical trial for a year and a half and administered solanezumab to 2000 patients. If the first results of this trial unveiled in 2012 had not been conclusive, the new conclusions report more significant effects of this drug for patients at an earlier stage of the disease.
The results of this test showed on the 2000 patients followed for the experiment that if the drug was administered at a sufficiently early stage of the disease, it allowed a slowing down of 34% of the mental decline of the patients, and of 18% of their loss of ability to perform daily tasks.
“These data strongly suggest that targeting patients in the early stages of the disease with these antibodies is the best way to slow down Alzheimer’s,” says Dr Doug Brown, director of research at the Alzheimer’s Society in the UK.
In view of these results, the laboratory announced that it would deepen its research and continue its clinical trials for two years with only patients suffering from a moderate form of Alzheimer’s, allowing those who took a placebo to also be treated with solanezumab.
“If solanezumab continues to show such results over the next few years in the 2,100 patients in these studies with moderately advanced disease, it could become the first drug found to be effective in slowing the symptoms of this irreversible neurological degeneration. age-related disease that affects five million Americans,” Lilly lab officials explained.
In France, according to the latest figures from the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm), 860,000 people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and the number of patients should reach two million in 2020. Alzheimer’s and related diseases represent the leading cause of age-related loss of intellectual functions.
Read also:
Cognitive decline faster in women
A new tool to diagnose the disease
