Dutch health insurance shouldn't cover new Alzheimer's medicine: Healthcare Institute

The Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi is not effective enough for patients, according to the Zorginstituut, the Netherlands’ National Healthcare Institute. People with Alzheimer’s using Leqembi still deteriorate, but the drug also puts them at risk of serious side effects. The institute recommends that Lequembi (the brand name for lecanemab) not be reimbursed by basic health insurance.

Last year, the European Commission approved the marketing of Leqembi in the European Union. At the time, a neurologist at the Alzheimer Center in Amsterdam called the drug “an important step forward.”

But according to the Zorginstituut, lecanemab offers no added value for people with Alzheimer’s who can use it. The effect of lecanemab is so minimal that patients “do not notice a sufficient difference after treatment.” They still “deteriorate significantly.”

At the same time, the drug puts them at risk of serious side effects, including brain hemorrhages and brain swelling, which can lead to paralysis, loss of speech, severe confusion, and in rare cases, death.

The causes of Alzheimer’s are not yet fully understood, but it is known that patients have protein deposits in the brain. Lecanemab binds to certain proteins, causing the body to eliminate them.

“Patients find it especially important to remain as independent as possible from help from others. But treatment with lecanemab does not change anything noticeable in daily life,” neurologist Edo Richard of Radboud University Medical Center said in a press release from the Zorginstituut.

Zorginstituut director Mark Janssen called it “a great disappointment that lecanemab is not a breakthrough. Hopefully, that breakthrough will come in the coming years.”