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From a Science article:
[Newly] published results from a closely watched clinical trial are being hailed as a big win by some in the Alzheimer's treatment field. The trial data hint that an anti–β amyloid antibody drug called aducanumab warded off cognitive decline in people diagnosed with early Alzheimer's. But the trial, an early test of the antibody's safety, is still too small to prove conclusive, leading many others to caution against false hope.
[...] newly published results from a closely watched clinical trial are being hailed as a big win by some in the Alzheimer's treatment field. The trial data hint that an anti–β amyloid antibody drug called aducanumab warded off cognitive decline in people diagnosed with early Alzheimer's. But the trial, an early test of the antibody's safety, is still too small to prove conclusive, leading many others to caution against false hope.
[...] Overall, Alzheimer's researchers are urging caution about the new drug results—even those who are co-authors on the paper. The study was "grossly underpowered" to determine whether cognition was actually better in people who took aducanumab, or a statistical fluke
Phase III trials are currently in progress and should be completed by 2020.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v537/n7618/full/nature19323.html
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02477800
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aducanumab
(Score: 3, Informative) by DECbot on Friday September 02 2016, @06:37PM
Funny, I read a blog that I vaguely recalled but Google quickly found about anti-β amyloid antibodies. Derek Lowe, a pharmaceutical chemist and established commentator on drug discovery and the pharma industry, wrote about aducanumab in his blog "In the Pipeline" a year ago [sciencemag.org]. He points out that only the 3mg and 10mg were the only data sets that showed a positive effect on metal decline while the 6mg dose showed very little effect. He then points out that the data set was too small to make any real conclusions and postulates if there is even a connection between amyloids and Alzheimer's (if I read the commentary & comments correctly).
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @07:03PM
True, one of the co-authors of the study agrees that conclusions about efficacy cannot be made until the sample size is increased.
The part that is interesting to me is that the study might be able to test the amyloid plaque hypothesis. If plaques are reduced, then we may find out the reasons why therapies for Alzheimer's have been failures and possibly change strategies.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday September 02 2016, @08:15PM
I found the comments to be the most interesting. There was a long discussion pointing out that other mammals have high densities of amyloids in late life, but don't suffer any signs of mental deterioration. I'm no where knowledgeable enough to argue in any way--I can only point to the difference between the in industry tone and the media at large.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base