this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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This is the real deal, not "we cured Alzheimer's in mice for the thousandth time".
That said, it only slows the disease a bit, so it's not that meaningful for patients yet. But, given that three years ago we didn't have ANY disease-modifying drugs, I still find that very encouraging.
Now, the big question of course is, if we give this before symptoms happen (amyloid deposits start ten+ years before clinical symptoms), does it prevent the disease? But this will have to wait for a few more years.
I don’t agree that this is the real deal. The effects were barely visible, and only in a subset of the patient group. Lilly will certainly make a ton of money pushing this on desperate family members of regressing loved ones, though. And there’s no way every single older person is going to get tested for amyloid buildup and take this for years before symptoms start.
And that’s not even considering the issue of whether amyloid buildup is a cause or effect of the disease. Given how poorly anti-amyloid therapies have been actually working in the clinic, I think it’s an effect. But a lot of powerful people have bet their careers on the amyloid hypothesis and it’s hard to turn that big of a ship around.
Is amyloid testing difficult/expensive?
The current gold-standard is a PET scan. Not crazy hard but also not the most common equipment, and reasonably expensive.
There are multiple companies trying to develop simpler tests such as blood or retina tests.