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Alzheimer’s disease, historic day: first drug approved in 20 years

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The US FDA has given the green light to the first drug to fight Alzheimer’s after 20 years. It is that produced from Biogen. The FDA’s decision was made despite opposition from the agency’s independent panel of experts and other Alzheimer’s experts that there is not enough evidence to show that the drug can really help patients. The drug consists of one intravenous injection per month that in Alzheimer’s therapy would help slow down the cognitive decline of patients who are in the early stage of the disease. This is the first treatment that affects the course of the disease and is not limited to attacking the symptoms of dementia.

What is Alzheimer’s

A sneaky start: People begin to forget some things, then get worse, to get to the point where they can’t even recognize family members anymore and need help with even the simplest daily tasks. Alzheimer’s dementia affects about 5% of people today with more than 60 years and in Italy, according to the information published on the EpiCentro portal of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, there are an estimated 500,000 sick people. A disease on which new hopes are lit with today’s approval by the American FDA of Aduhelm, the first drug approved since 2003.
The disease affects memory and cognitive functions, affects the ability to speak and think but can also cause other problems including states of confusion, mood swings and space-time disorientation. An enormous psychological cost for the sick and families, but also significant material repercussions: according to a recent Censis research, the direct cost of assistance alone is 11 billion a year, over 70% borne by families.
It is named after Alois Alzheimer, a German neurologist who for the first time in 1907 described the symptoms and neuropathological aspects. On his autopsy examination, the doctor noticed particular signs in the brain tissue of a woman who had died from an unusual mental illness. In fact, he highlighted the presence of agglomerates, later called amyloid plaques, and of bundles of tangled fibers, the neuro-fibrillar tangles. Today the plaques formed by amyloid proteins and the tangles are considered the effects on the nervous tissues of a disease whose causes are still unknown, despite the great efforts put in place. In patients with Alzheimer’s dementia, a loss of nerve cells is observed in areas of the brain vital for memory and other cognitive functions. There is also a low level of those chemicals, such as acetylcholine, which work as neurotransmitters and are therefore involved in communication between nerve cells.

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