Eisai condemns NICE ruling but expert defends it

Eisai has followed in the footsteps of Shire and the Alzheimer’s Society by publicly condemning NICE’s decision to not provide acetylcholinesterase inhibitors on the NHS for the treatment of mild Alzheimer’s disease.

Several pharmaceutical companies that offer such drugs blasted the decision because they said the drugs have real benefits for patients with newly diagnosed, mild Alzheimer’s. The Alzheimer’s Society described the ruling as “destroying people’s lives”.

Eisai’s Dr Paul Hooper, managing director, admitted that his company had commercial interests at stake in NICE’s decision, but he told Channel Four’s News at Noon programme that “this is really about the patients, not money”.

He said: “To deny patients suffering this devastating disease medicines which cost 2.50 pounds a day is beyond belief. I think it is completely the wrong decision.”

However, professor Richard Gray of the University of Birmingham, who led a five-year study into the most commonly-prescribed Alzhiemer’s drugs, said the decision had nothing to do with costs and that the benefit of the drugs in newly-diagnosed mild Alzheimer’s patients was questionable.

He told Channel Four News: “It’s about effectiveness. We found a one point improvement on a 60 point scale.

“[One] point is equivalent to ten weeks delay in the progress of the disease, or improvement in symptoms equivalent to setting the disease back ten week. That is a very small difference indeed.”

“And we found that you could actually hardly tell whether the patients were taking the actual drug or taking the placebo,” he concluded.

Final guidance from NICE is expected in July after considering appeals from the Alzheimer’s Society and Shire, which announced its appeal yesterday.

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