Alzheimer sufferers win 60m drug fight
The Observer | UK News | Alzheimer sufferers win �60m drug fight: "Alzheimer sufferers win �60m drug fight� Family protests force policy U-turn
� Acute dementia patients left out
Hundreds of thousands of Britons who suffer from Alzheimer's disease are to be given a massive boost tomorrow when government experts finally conclude that the benefits of at least three breakthrough drug treatments outweigh the financial costs.
Following an outpouring of protest from thousands of families whose relatives have been helped by the drugs, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) will reverse its earlier plan to ban the treatments which cost the NHS £60m a year. Instead, it will conclude that Aricept and other similar drugs should be given to patients in the early stages of the disease, when they have mild or moderate dementia."
The article concludes:"Three of the drugs, rivastigmine (brand name Exelon), donepezil (Aricept) and galantamine (Reminyl), cost around £2.50 per day per patient, resulting in an NHS bill of £60m a year. They belong to a class known as cholinesterase inhibitors, and were approved for use on the NHS in 2001.
They are currently prescribed to some 54,000 patients, but that is only a small proportion of the number who should be on the drugs. The fourth drug is Ebixa, also known as memantine, which costs £69 a month. This is the first in a new class of drugs called NMDA receptor antagonists which appear to have a protective effect on the brain, slowing down progress at the later stages of the disease.
The latest evidence suggests that 20 per cent of Alzheimer's patients do very well on the drugs, and up to 68 per cent derive some benefit. Campaigners say that to withhold the only treatment available to sufferers is immoral."
posted by Jen @ 2:48 AM
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