Why Europe has not authorized this new treatment

It is a disappointment for patients and their loved ones who have been waiting a long time for a treatment to arrive: lecanemab, presented as the first treatment against Alzheimer’s disease, will not arrive in Europe. This drug, marketed under the name “ Leqembi “, has been authorized in the United States and Japan since 2023. More recently, China and the United Kingdom have also given the green light. But in Europe, the molecule saw its application for authorization refused at the end of July by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). A decision that represents a “ hard blow »according to the France Alzheimer association. There are several reasons for this choice.

The originality of this drug is that it belongs to a new generation of treatments that attacks one of the presumed causes of the disease: amyloid plaques. These protein aggregates accumulate in the brain and are suspected of being the cause of the symptoms of the disease.