People living with a form of Lewy body dementia potentially have access to a promising investigational drug that appears to reduce or improve symptoms.
Dr. Dave Shprecher is a movement disorder neurologist for Banner Sun Health Research Institute in Sun City.
He says they recently wrapped a clinical trial for people with dementia with Lewy bodies — a more aggressive form of Lewy body dementia, "but where the memory/thinking problems, the Parkinson's symptoms, the hallucinations come right in the first year of symptoms, together."
This study enrolled individuals in the earlier stages.
"What we can say is the Phase 2 study was pretty much the largest, and one of the first trials for this aggressive condition, dementia with Lewy bodies, that showed a lot of promise in terms of meeting all of the different things we were hoping to see."
An anonymous donation made it possible to provide the oral medication through the expanded access program, which lets patients with serious or life-threatening conditions access investigational drugs.
So far, 30 people are doing so and there may be enough for more individuals to join.
The drug is also part of a Phase 3 trial for Alzheimer's disease. If that’s successful, and goes to the FDA, it could clear the way for a Phase 3 trial for dementia with Lewy bodies.
