Alzheimer's - bad news

Well done to the Aberdeen team for progress with their new Alzheimer's drug. I feel obliged to offer congratulations as you can't get much more northern than Aberdeen. However, I feel far greater congratulations should be going to their publicists. They have managed to make a splash all over the telly and the front pages of the rags today.


I don't need to document here the cruelty of this disease and it is not Alzheimer's per se that is winding me up today. It has been reported here with spectacular disregard for any issues of medical evidence. Wheeling out some trial participants and parading them in the media hardly constitutes a fair assessment of any drug's future utility in daily medical practice. Do we even know if they got Rember or placebo?? (Rember is a typically catchy name - presumably the drug name is well nigh unpronouncable.) I have no doubt this is partially motivated by patient groups' disappointment at recent NICE decisions.

I just find that single issue organisations make me cantankerous. It might be something to do with being a GP. One minute I might well be seeing someone with Alzheimer's disease but ten minutes later it will be a mental health issue with no access to care or a cancer patient with worries about receiving the latest treatment. How can you favour one at the expense of the other? Opportunity cost the public health people call it. Perhaps that cost will be felt in the provision of care to other dementia patients. The BMJ recently publised an editorial on the use of antipsychotics for people with dementia. Non-drug measures are first line but are in short supply.

NICE may well be a centralist government's ugly henchman doing the dirty work of rationing but with the current NHS model then the bucks have to stop somewhere. A trial drug, possibly years away from licence and the Alzheimer's lobby have already got their first attack in. Well done.

What about some investment in non-pharmaceutical care? This story just continues to feed a public, media and medical obsession with magic pills.