A new drug that slows the pace of Alzheimer’s disease is too expensive for too little benefit to be used on the NHS in England, the drugs spending watchdog says. Donanemab was hailed as a turning point in the disease last year. But the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said the drug provided only a small benefit to patients. And it came with huge costs, including the price of the drug and monitoring for significant side-effects such as brain swelling and brain bleeds.
People do not get better on donanemab. It is not a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, but it slows the progression of the disease. It works by clearing a sticky protein from the brain – called amyloid – which is one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s.
Donanemab was one of a pair of drugs to generate huge excitement because they were the first to show that Alzheimer’s could be slowed down in trials. Earlier today, the drug was approved and given a licence by the safety regulator, the MHRA, which means it can be prescribed privately.
But this doesn’t mean it can automatically be offered free on the NHS. The NHS does not have a cap on how much it can spend on a drug – it pays for some therapies that cost more than a million pounds. Whether or not a drug is given the green light depends on how big a difference it makes – the more effective and transformative the drug, the more the NHS is willing to pay.
The health spending body NICE has ruled the drug would not be a good use of taxpayers’ money and was five-to-six times more expensive than the NHS normally considers acceptable. …
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