EXPERT COMMENT: Lecanemab - worst cost benefit ratio in history?
Lecanemab has been given the green light in the UK.
According to Patrick Holford, founder of the leading Alzheimer’s prevention charity foodforthebrain.org, “In terms of a cost-benefit ratio, Lecanemab has to be one of the worst in history. On the benefit side those in the drug company’s own trial got statistically slightly less worse after 18 months of treatment versus placebo. No one got better. The scale of improvement was not enough to be clinically significant and “does not necessarily reflect a meaningful improvement for patients or their families” according to the British Medical Journal editorial [1].
The worst cost is that a quarter of those on the drug got either brain swelling or bleeding. Three participants in the trial died, as a consequence. Also, there was accelerated brain shrinkage compared to placebo.
Due to these horrendous risks, patients getting the twice monthly IV infusions will need to have brain scans to check for brain bleeding and swelling. The drug itself will cost about £25,000 a year per person, but, with the medical costs, it may actually cost the patients or the NHS as much as double this.
The biggest lie reported in the papers is that ‘this is the first treatment that has been found to curb the condition’, says the Mail and ‘the first drug to slow down Alzheimer’s”, says the Telegraph.
It isn’t. Inexpensive and safe B vitamins given to those with raised homocysteine (about half of all over age 65) have produced far greater clinical improvements to those with pre-dementia. In fact, a third had no clinical dementia rating at the end of the year – in other words were no longer diagnosable with dementia. So too have omega-3 fish oil supplements, given to those with low homocysteine (and sufficient B vitamins) with results up the three times better than that of Lecanemab.[2]
In addition, the omega-3 and B vitamin combo reported up to 73% less brain shrinkage, not more shrinkage as reported with this drug. This gold-standard evidence, from studies at the University of Oxford by Professor of pharmacology David Smith, are simply being ignored.
So, that’s the choice for dementia sufferers. Safe supplements that might cost you £100 a year, reduce the rate of brain shrinkage and deliver clear clinical improvements. Or Lecanemab, which carries a small risk of death, and a considerable risk of brain swelling or bleeding which has not shown improvement in a single patient but is likely to deliver a small, clinically meaningless slowing down of worsening at a cost of something around £50,000 a year to the patient or the NHS.
The caveat for the drug is that the risks for those with the ApoE4 gene variant – about a quarter of people - is deemed too high. The caveat for the B vitamins is that those with normal homocysteine levels (below 10mcmol/l), which is less than half those over 65, may not benefit from the B vitamin treatment. Homocysteine is a simple test any GP can do.
Thank you for reading,
The charity, Foodforthebrain.org also offers a home test for those volunteering to take part in their prevention research, which involves a free online Cognitive Function test, and the easy-to-use home-test kit. See: https://foodforthebrain.org/the-cognitive-function-test/
References:
[1] BMJ 2022;379:o3010 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o3010
[2] https://foodforthebrain.org/campaigns/alzheimers-prevention/omega-3-and-b-vitamins/
Great post!
All these medicine based panaceas are poisons.
It always amazes me how they (the system - to include the gov, pharma and med community) have convinced people that a getting rid of acid reflux with a pill is worth muscle spasms, twitching seizures
numbness and tingling around the mouth, pains in the stomach, side, or abdomen, rapid weight gain
red skin lesions, seizures, vomiting of blood, bleeding gums, blurred or decreased vision, mood or mental changes.
This Lecanemab is the same, but even more diabolic, because it plays on patients and family members fears - loss of cognitive identity and existence. My mother is moving through the mid stages of LBD. There are a few studies of new meds that "save memory" for 4 months. The side effects, as with all this poison - brain bleeds, aneurism, loss of memory (yup you read that right), balance issues, confusion, and more. Thankfully, I've done much research and learning and we have a very moralled and honest neurologist, who intently explains the miniscule POI for these medications.
Just as with the scamdemic, this and other poisons are a revenue scam. The system, is always at work and the populations are the fields where they harvest their profits.