Add Baxter International’s Gammagard to the ash heap of failed Alzheimer’s drug candidates. Baxter announced today that Gammagard did not provide any cognitive or functional improvement in 390 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. The patients who were enrolled in the Phase III trial received the drug through infusions over an 18 month period. [...]

With sophisticated brain imaging tests now making their way out of research labs or clinical trials, and into the doctor’s office, both patients and physicians will have to confront some important ethical and legal questions on how these tests are used. That’s the message from a seminar on amyloid imaging, hosted by the American Academy [...]

Rising Dementia Rates are a Global Health Trend A positive aspect of rising living standards in most of the world has been a significant improvement in worldwide average life expectancies, increasing from 52 years in 1960 to 69 years in 2009. Regional differences are even more striking — the average life expectancy for a person [...]

After the disaster known as bapineuzumab Phase III, I think it’s time to seriously question whether clearing amyloid beta deposits from the brain has any therapeutic benefit to Alzheimer’s patients. The bapi Phase III results speak with a resounding “No”. We are still awaiting Phase III results from Eli Lilly’s solanezumab, but the current prognosis [...]

A research team at Washington University School of Medicine just published the results of a study that looked at a number of cognitive changes and biomarkers that can be used to predict the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease long before symptoms appear – in some cases up to 20 years before symptom onset. The study, published [...]