Dementia drug appeal victory gives hope

It seems odd that while potential treatments or cures for Alzheimer’s disease are heralded in the media virtually every week, access to a readily-available drug that is proven to help people with the condition is restricted.

Yet this is the case with Aricept, a drug that many people with early-stage dementia say has changed their lives – although hardly anyone can now get it on the NHS.

But this could be about to change, thanks to a Court of Appeal ruling.

The ruling relates back to November 2006 when the NHS advisory body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (ironically referred to as NICE), decided it was not cost-effective to give Aricept to people with early-stage dementia and reversed its earlier guidance to issue it as standard.

The decision came as a shock to many people with the condition. Anecdotally, many have sung the praises of Aricept and the way it has given them their life back – few can fathom NICE’s decision.

Moreover, nobody understood the decision because few if any details of how NICE reached that verdict were made public.

As a result, Eisai, the manufacturer of Aricept, challenged the process that NICE went through to arrive at its decision to restrict access to the drug. The case went all the way to the Court of Appeal – after the High Court rejected Eisai’s case – which sided with the manufacturer. Giving NICE a rap on the knuckles, the Court of Appeal insists that in the future it should be more transparent in the way it makes decisions.

Eisai will now be able to see how NICE came to its decision and comment on it. NICE will then have to go away and consider those comments carefully, which could lead to another review of Aricept’s availability.

So what’s in it for all those people with dementia? Some 100,000 or so people denied Aricept and other such drugs will hopefully get the review they’ve been pushing for and a positive decision will be made for them sooner rather than later.