ADUCANUMAB IN THE TREATMENT OF ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE

Abstract

Introduction: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a chronic pathology, characterized by progressive cognitive impairment and neurobehavioral changes. Common treatments for Alzheimer's disease are symptomatic in focus and have modest benefits. On June 7, 2021, the US regulatory agency Food And Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of the drug Aducanumab. Objectives: to analyze the main studies about Aducanumab and its effectiveness in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Materials and methods: This is an integrative review, in which the guiding question was "How effective is Aducanumab in the treatment of Alzheimer's?". The search for articles was carried out in the main databases (PubMed and Scielo) using the terms “Aducanumab”, “treatment” and “Alzheimer's”, combined by Boolean operators. Results and Discussion: Over the past 25 years, several Aβ-targeted drugs have failed to demonstrate clinical efficacy in trials, including five anti-Aβ antibodies: bapineuzumab, solanezumab, crenezumab, ponezumab, and gantenerumab. Aducanumab is part of a new generation of anti-Aβ monoclonal antibodies that specifically target Aβ aggregates. Monoclonal antibodies against Aβ as a class statistically improved cognition by a small effect size and strongly decreased brain amyloid burden and p181-tau in cerebrospinal fluid suggesting some degree of disease modification, at the expense of increased risk of imaging abnormalities related to amyloid. Aducanumab has produced promising clinical and biomarker results. Conclusion: Despite the controversy, it is clear that Aducanumab significantly reduces Aβ in the brain, one of the hallmarks of AD. Furthermore, the results also showed that Aducanumab decreases brain levels of tau.