Patients and their families may see hope in the news that the Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug to slow the pace of Alzheimer¡¯s disease. Aducanumab is the first medicine authorized to treat what might be an underlying cause of the disease: amyloid beta clumps that accumulate in the brain.
Yet the evidence from clinical trials that this drug reduces Alzheimer¡¯s is incomplete; it may be only minimally effective, if it works at all. The FDA¡¯s own expert panel strongly objected to the drug¡¯s approval.
All of which makes the FDA¡¯s announcement both perplexing and wrong. It threatens to mislead millions of Alzheimer¡¯s patients. At the same time, because Biogen plans to price the drug at $56,000 a year for the average patient, it also stands to cost Medicare and other insurers a bundle.
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