News
FDA Approves New Alzheimer's Drug
Associated Press - October 17, 2003 WASHINGTON (AP)
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The government on Friday approved a
new option for sufferers of Alzheimer's disease, the
first treatment specifically for late stages of the
mind-robbing illness.
Called memantine, the drug has long been sold in Germany
and many U.S. families out of options try to buy supplies
overseas via the Internet.
Now armed with Food and Drug Administration approval,
U.S. marketer Forest Laboratories will sell memantine
here under the brand name Namenda, for patients with
moderate to severe Alzheimer's symptoms.
Forest said the drug should be on pharmacy shelves
in January.
Memantine doesn't offer miraculous benefits. The FDA's
scientific advisers, in evaluating the drug last month,
worried that memantine's debut could give false hope
to families of the most severely ill.
In studies, some patients given memantine have experienced
improvements in memory and thinking skills. But for
the vast majority the drug instead slows the pace
of deterioration, letting patients maintain certain
functions a little longer. For example, the drug helped
some patients maintain the ability to go to the bathroom
independently for six more months, a benefit caregivers
called very important.
It's an important step because memantine is the first
option for advanced stages of Alzheimer's. The nation's
four other Alzheimer's medications - Aricept, Exelon,
Reminyl and Cognex - work in early stages of the disease.
And those drugs work very differently than memantine.
They delay the breakdown of a brain chemical called
acetylcholine that is vital for nerve cells to communicate.
Memantine, in contrast, blocks excess amounts of another
brain chemical, called glutamate, that can damage
or kill nerve cells.
That means for the first time, doctors could prescribe
combinations of drugs in hopes of better results.
About 4 million Americans have Alzheimer's, and a
million of them are believed to suffer severe symptoms.
