A new drug hopefully reduces cognitive decline in Alzheimer's patients: report

A new drug gives hope for restoring normal cognitive functions in Alzheimer's patients, reports the Guardian.

The drug proved to slow the cognitive decline in patients with early stages of the condition.

The promising results follow decades of futile research to contain the most feared degenerative condition.

The drug, lecanemab, offers an antibody therapy that gets rid of "clumps of a protein called beta-amyloid which builds up in the brain", the report said.

The drug reportedly reduced the decline of overall mental skills by 27 per cent over 18 months

It is obviously a praiseworthy achievement considering the dead-end most studies to cure the disease hit.

However, it is not clear how much clumps work up Alzheimer's but the report said they are causing a "cascade of brain changes" in the case of inherited forms of the disease.

The US-based Biogen and Eisai in Japan that developed the drug announced the results of the clinical trial in about 1,800 patients in September.

The data garnered from the study was published in the New England of Journal of Medicine on Tuesday.

Alzheimer's accounts for almost two-thirds of the 55 million people living with dementia in the world, according to The Guardian.

Patients, according to the report, typically die within seven years of diagnosis of the disease.

Debates are still continuing regarding the safety of the drug following reports of two deaths on the trail being linked to it.

Reports further claimed 13 deaths on the trial which included six who received the drug and seven who were on a placebo.

However, investigators have not linked the deaths, according to a report, to the drug.