Abstract
Introduction: The advent of disease-modifying therapies for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has raised many questions and debates in the field as to the clinical benefits, risks, and costs of such therapies. The controversies have resulted in the perception that many clinicians are apprehensive about prescribing these medications to their patient populations. There also remains widespread uncertainty as to the economic impact, cost benefit ratio, and safety oversight for use of these medications in standard clinical care settings.
Methods: To contextualize such issues, the present study compared anti-amyloid biologic therapy (lecanemab) to four commonly used biologic agents in other fields, including trastuzumab for breast cancer, bevacizumab for lung cancer, etanercept for rheumatoid arthritis, and ocrelizumab for multiple sclerosis.
Results: The data presented demonstrate comparable costs, clinical benefits, and risks for these biologic agents in their disparate disease states. Discussion: These results provide context for the costs, clinical benefits, and safety regarding the mainstream use of anti-amyloid biologic agents for the prevention of cognitive loss. While the era of disease-modifying therapies for AD is now in its infancy, there is an expectation that these discoveries will be followed by improved therapies and combination treatments leading to greater efficacy in ameliorating the clinical trajectory of AD.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-2024
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1002/trc2.12500
Funding Information
This work was in part supported by NIH P30 AG072946.
Repository Citation
Jicha, Gregory; Abner, Erin; Coskun, Elif Pinar; Huffmyer, Mark; Tucker, Thomas; and Nelson, Peter T., "Perspectives on the clinical use of anti-amyloid therapy for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease: Insights from the fields of cancer, rheumatology, and neurology" (2024). Neurology Faculty Publications. 87.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/neurology_facpub/87
Notes/Citation Information
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. © 2024 The Author(s). Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Alzheimer’s Association.