The NHS will now ban the use of the most successful medication ever developed for Alzheimer’s disease.
It is anticipated that the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency would deem Donanemab safe.
Donanemab has been called a revolutionary treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. It delayed its development by 35 percent, according to research.
However, the Daily Telegraph said yesterday night that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) will decide it is too costly.
Since health insurance policies are unlikely to pay prices, patients will only be able to acquire either medication from private clinics under Nice’s recommendations, unless they are enrolled in a clinical trial.
Prof Sir John Hardy, a leading neurological researcher at UCL, said he felt the drug was ‘game-changing’ and that Nice was ‘coming down on the wrong side of the argument’.
Prof Hardy was the first to identify the role of amyloid in Alzheimer’s, which has now led to drugs that work by clearing the protein.
He told The Times: ‘These drugs can give people an extra two years at home rather than in a nursing home. That is time enjoying their lives, having holidays—this is important stuff.
‘These are finely balanced arguments, but I do think they’ve come down on the wrong side of it.
‘I also think that the benefit of approval would be that it would kick NHS dementia care into shape, which really needs to happen. These drugs will come down the line at some point, and I don’t think the NHS is ready for them.’
About 1 million individuals in the UK have dementia, including one in six adults over 80. The great majority of care is either paid for privately or given by loved ones.
However, Nice excludes these ‘non-medical’ costs of care in its decision-making.
Forecasters anticipate that the UK spends about £42 billion annually on dementia, and by 2040, that amount might increase to £90 billion.
Lecanemab, the first ground-breaking therapy for the illness, was licenced in August; the decision on donanemab is expected to follow suit.
Lilly, the company that makes lecanemab, anticipates that the treatment will cost $32,000 (£24,600) in the US, which is around 25% more than their first ground-breaking medication.
As opposed to an hour every two weeks, it has the benefit of being a 30-minute monthly intravenous injection, which lowers the NHS’s cost of administration.
Total treatment costs for donanemab in the US, including monitoring and scans, average $78,000 per year (£60,000) per patient.
The medication can be stopped by patients if it effectively removes the amyloid protein that it targets from the brain. However, lecanemab is given indefinitely until the disease reaches a moderate stage.
Our government can afford to treat illegal aliens, but they can’t afford to treat our own citizens. This is absurd, and our Labour government are going to spend millions on Ozempic for obesity. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink it.
Whether this is a wonder drug or not is probably open to debate, but as far as the cost situation is concerned, if the NHS stopped paying enormous salaries to non-medical staff, then perhaps their money would go further.
Additionally, it appears that Labour does not support the elderly.
The elderly are the focus of Labour’s policies, which they appear to hate. Since the fuel allowance was eliminated, the NHS no longer provides patients with treatments aimed at enhancing their quality of life.
Since this medication is used to treat primarily elderly patients, it has naturally been blocked. Since it’s all a part of the deliberate and continuous culling of the old, anything that extends the life of those over 60 is prohibited.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 