Advances in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, ways the insurance industry is helping, and an offer of free money: these three strands all come together to encourage financial services to understand dementia better.
In June this year, US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announced the top-line results from its phase three trial of donanemab, an immunotherapy treatment designed for people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
The drug works by removing amyloid plaques from the brain with the aim of slowing the decline in people’s memory and cognitive functioning. The results suggest that the treatment could:
- Slow the rate of clinical progression of Alzheimer’s disease by 36 per cent.
- Reduce the decline of people’s ability to undertake daily activities by 40 per cent.
- Reduce the amount of amyloid in the brain – after 18 months, 72 per cent of people had normal levels of amyloid.
Alongside the announcement of another similar treatment (lecanemab) last year, this means that we could see two disease modifying treatments becoming available to people in the next three years.
It’s been 20 years since a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease has been approved in the UK and currently none of the available treatments slow the progression of the disease.
Critical juncture
We are at a critical point in the research journey for Alzheimer’s disease, where we now know enough about the underlying causes to start seeing real world benefits that could change lives for the better.
So many lives and hopes are pinned on disease modifying treatments becoming available on the NHS. In addition to regulatory approval, any treatment will need an early and accurate diagnosis for it to make a meaningful difference and give people the best quality of life possible.
The pandemic had a devastating effect on diagnosis rates, and systems are still overwhelmed by a backlog of tens of thousands.
Dr Richard Oakley, associate director of research at Alzheimer’s Society, said: "We need decisions as quickly as possible from the regulators MHRA and NICE.
"But that’s not the end of the story - we can’t end up in a situation where there are new drugs being approved but people can’t get access to them early in their dementia journey when they work best – we need more accurate, earlier dementia diagnosis in the NHS.”
Breakthroughs like donanemab are only possible because of the decades of research that have come before.
This treatment has been developed from the amyloid hypothesis, first posited by Professor Sir John Hardy in a research project funded by Alzheimer’s Society supporters like Insurance United Against Dementia (IUAD).
IUAD is an Alzheimer’s Society movement created and championed by the insurance industry and so far it’s raised an amazing £8mn, on its way to a target of £10mn.
Most of that has so far come from the general insurance side of the business. The money raised helps fund vital support services that Alzheimer’s Society runs, such as its brilliant Dementia Advisers, alongside crucial, world-class research.
Dementia is a devastating condition that strips away people’s memories and connections to the world. Alzheimer’s Society believes that 209,600 people will develop dementia this year - that’s one person every three minutes.
