New Alzheimer’s drug rejected: is Nice bad?

“I know firsthand the horrors of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Catherine Pepinster in The Daily Telegraph: it was my mother’s illness. So I was delighted to hear last week that the first drug found to reduce the onset of the condition has been approved for use in the UK. However, as soon as this good news appeared, the Nice health expert announced that the drug would be denied to NHS patients for cost reasons.

Trials have shown that 70,000 people in England with Alzheimer’s disease could be eligible for treatment with lecanemab, the drug in question, at a cost of £30,000 a year per patient – adding about £2.1bn. . Sure it’s a lot of money, but the NHS spends more than three times that a year on treating obesity. “Expensive surgeries like gastric bypasses are not restricted to obesity. So why is a potentially life-changing drug for the elderly being overlooked?”