A recently government funded study has established that the drugs used for Alzheimer disease have far more side effects than the benefits these bring to the patients. About 4.5 million Americans suffer from the disease.
The $17 million study which was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health was carried out at 33 university and hospital clinics and nine doctor's offices in the U.S. It was to assess the effectiveness of antipsychotics Zyprexa by Eli Lilly & Co., Seroquel by AstraZeneca, and Risperdal by Johnson & Johnson. The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The procedure conducted for the research was very innovative to say the least. The study tested the drugs on 421 patients at 42 medical centers who needed considerable care. Each patient got one of the drugs or a dummy pill, without knowing what they received. The doctor could raise the dose if needed. Patients were followed for nine months, longer than in most previous tests.
If the procedure was innovative, then the results were astounding. About 80% of the patients stopped taking the medication due to troubling side effects such as grogginess, worsening confusion, weight gain and Parkinson's-like symptoms such as rigidity and trouble walking.
Five deaths were reported among the patients on the medication, versus two in the placebo group.
Surprisingly the difference in the number of people getting better in the two groups wasn’t large either. 30% patients showed improvement in the real medicine group compared to 21% in the dummy pill group. This can happen partly because symptoms can naturally reduce in some cases.
Lead researcher Dr. Lon Schneider, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Center of California and a University of Southern California professor, said doctors should try the drugs if necessary, but watch patients closely and switch to something else after a few weeks if there is no improvement or side effects are too severe.
“The question is whether these drugs have a place in the treatment of Alzheimer’s patients at all,” said Dr. Jason Karlawish, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. “I think the answer is yes, but only for a subgroup of patients who can tolerate them, and in facilities that have the expertise to manage the side effects.”
The report is the third large study in the last year to conclude that atypical antipsychotics are not as effective or as safe as initially portrayed. Last year, government researchers found that three of four drugs tested were no more effective than an older, far less expensive drug in treating schizophrenia — the disorder for which the medications were originally approved.
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