Report: New Alzheimer's Drugs Might be Less Effective for Ethnic Minorities

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Facts

  • On Monday, leading Alzheimer's experts reported that promising new treatments for the disease — which work by removing a toxic protein called beta-amyloid from the brain — may benefit white patients more than Black and Hispanic patients.1
  • According to researchers and pharmaceutical executives, though older black Americans and Hispanics have higher rates of dementia than white people, they were excluded from clinical trials as the prospective subjects reportedly didn't have enough amyloid in their brains to participate.2
  • The disparity around amyloid is allegedly prompting doubts over whether the first two drugs ever proven to slow the rate of cognitive decline — Leqembi and Donanemab — are even applicable to groups most at risk of developing Alzheimer's.3
  • The news comes as a study published in Nature last week found that racial and ethnic minority groups are disproportionately at risk for Alzheimer's, but are underrepresented in most US-based research samples in direct and indirect studies.4
  • 6.5M Americans are estimated to be living with Alzheimer's, with roughly one-fifth of older Black Americans and 14% of Hispanics having the brain condition or another kind of dementia.1
  • Socioeconomic factors, such as racism, income inequalities, and lack of high-quality medical care, are some of the reasons researchers say the underlying biology of different populations play a role in dementia.3

Sources: 1Reuters, 2New York Post, 3NBC, and 4Nature.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by BNN Breaking. Pharmaceutical companies developing groundbreaking treatments for Alzheimer's are aware of and working to understand why Black and Hispanic individuals have been underrepresented in clinical trials. Both Eisai and Lilly have vowed to reflect the population's makeup in their next trial enrolment, as every American deserves to access new treatments for the neurodegenerative disease.
  • Narrative B, as provided by KFF Health News. It's nonsensical that the next hope to freeze the progression of Alzheimer's disease is anti-amyloid drugs, when minorities with symptoms of the disease have been screened out of trials precisely because they had relatively low levels of the toxic protein in their brains. Black patients have higher risks of brain hemorrhaging and tend to be diagnosed too late for treatment to be effective; devising effective treatment for minorities should be better prioritized.

Predictions