Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia.
Alzheimer’s is a disease clinically characterized mainly by memory loss, which adds other symptoms, both cognitive and behavioral-related.
Alzheimer’s stages
- Normal: Phase in which people can be free of objective or subjective symptoms of cognitive and functional decline.
- Benign forgetfulness associated with age: These people observe in themselves difficulties in remembering some things.
- Mild Cognitive Impairment: It consists of a set of very mild symptoms such as: repeating questions several times.
- Mild stage: limitation in their abilities to carry out daily tasks that they did before without any problem. Example: food preparation.
- Moderate: This phase lasts approximately one and a half years and patients become dependent.
- Moderately Severe: Cognitive symptoms are severe, and the patient may confuse relatives or not recognize close family members. This phase has a progressive process going through several stages and lasts approximately two and a half years.
- Severe: In this progressive phase the physical and neurological changes are devastating. Generally the patient dies in this phase, due to pneumonia, or pressure ulcer infection.
Thanks to advances in medicine, they have developed a new medication for people with this disease in its early stages.
According to the journal Nature, it was reported that in early 2023, US regulators would announce whether a drug that reduced the rate of cognitive decline in a robust clinical trial may be available for people with Alzheimer’s disease.
The drug called lecanemab was produced by the pharmaceutical company Eisai and the biotechnology firm Biogen.
The drug’s clinical trial included 1,795 people with early-stage Alzheimer’s and showed that lecanemab slowed mental decline by 27% compared to a placebo.
During this year, another Alzheimer’s drug produced by Anavex Life Sciences in the US, called blarkamesine, will continue clinical trials.
Words used:
Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease that affects memory and other important mental functions.
Lecanemab: is a monoclonal antibody that eliminates the amyloid-β protein that accumulates in the brain.
