Should doctors prescribe Leqembi (lecanemab) to women with early Alzheimer’s Disease? The evidence-based answer is probably No

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time a range of inter­ven­tions for brain/ cognitive/ men­tal health plus a few brain teasers to test our per­cep­tion and cog­ni­tive skills.

#1. Should doc­tors pre­scribe lecanemab (Leqem­bi) to women? The answer, giv­en avail­able evi­dence, is prob­a­bly No

• Huge (and most­ly over­looked) red flag regard­ing new­ly approved “anti-Alzheimer’s” drugs: “To put it blunt­ly, if lecanemab doesn’t work in women it would be uneth­i­cal to sup­ply it to women. Recall this cost­ly immunother­a­py comes with sub­stan­tive risks, includ­ing high inci­dence of ARIA and even death.”

#2. Grow­ing con­tro­ver­sy over role of FDA and Medicare in pro­mot­ing anti-amy­loid drugs giv­en lim­it­ed ben­e­fit, high cost, severe side-effects

• There’s even a peti­tion cir­cu­lat­ing among sci­en­tists and doc­tors stat­ing that “As the FDA pre­pares to deter­mine if it will grant full approval for its wide­spread use, the avail­able data sug­gests lecanemab is inef­fec­tive and may be harm­ful, mak­ing its use and cost unjustifiable.”

#3. How the Arts trans­form our Brains, Bod­ies, and Minds

• “The arts can trans­form you like noth­ing else.”

#4. Smart­phone-based cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py found to sig­nif­i­cant­ly decrease insom­nia, sub­stan­tial­ly out­per­form­ing sleep education

• Capa­bil­i­ties > Knowledge

#5. Study shows the pow­er of elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy and machine learn­ing to help pre­dict response to psy­chother­a­py (or lack there­of) in patients with PTSD

• “Not only could EEG ML pre­dict treat­ment, but mod­els trained on one ther­a­py could pre­dict the oth­er. Not only could EEG ML pre­dict respon­ders, but it could also iden­ti­fy non-responders.…people for whom nei­ther ther­a­py works.”

#6. The Nation­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) in Eng­land to roll-out nine online cog­ni­tive-behav­iour­al ther­a­pies (CBT) for adults with anx­i­ety or depression

• “They pro­vide an alter­na­tive way of access­ing sup­port, which may be more con­ve­nient for some, the Nation­al Insti­tute for Health and Care Excel­lence (NICE) says … NICE will look at the evi­dence from their use over the next few years to work out how cost-effec­tive they are.”

#7. Study: Self-guid­ed inter­net-deliv­ered treat­ment can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce ADHD symp­toms among adults

• “Adults in the inter­ven­tion group report­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater reduc­tions in ADHD symp­toms fol­low­ing treat­ment than con­trol par­tic­i­pants; these dif­fer­ences were main­tained at the 3?month fol­low-up … Fur­ther, no adults in the inter­ven­tion group showed a mean­ing­ful increase in symp­toms from base­line to fol­low-up while this hap­pened for over 19% of adults in the con­trol group.”

Last but not least, a few brain teasers and sci­ence tips for adults of any age:

• #8. Brain teas­er to chal­lenge your brain: The Blind Beggar
• #9. Quick brain­teas­er to test your men­tal rota­tion skills
• #10. What are cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and how to boost them?

Have a great summer!