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Aducanumab / Aduhelm: Benefits, Side-Effects & Insurance Coverage

Last Updated: May 03, 2022

 

What is Aducanumab / Aduhelm?

Aducanumab is an antibody infusion that recently received FDA approval as a drug that eases symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, especially for people in the early stages. Sold under the brand name Aduhelm, aducanumab is from cloned immune cells (called “monoclonal antibodies”) that help fight dementia by targeting amyloid-beta. Amyloid-beta is a protein that occurs naturally in healthy brains but forms clumps or tangles between the brain cells of people with Alzheimer’s disease, causing cell death that leads to symptoms including memory loss. Studies have suggested that Aducanumab binds to amyloid beta tangles and reduces them.

Aducanumab is not taken as a pill, but rather as an infusion administered in a doctor’s office for one hour every four weeks. The price tag is unfortunately expensive, at around $28,800 per year, but the drugmaker Biogen has said it is working with insurance companies to make out-of-pocket costs much less for those who need it. For more on cost and insurance coverage, see below.

Aducanumab’s journey through the FDA approval process was a mix of promising developments and setbacks until its approval in June 2021. The history of how Aduhelm became available to people with Alzheimer’s disease is described below.

 Did You Know? The FDA had previously not approved a drug treatment for Alzheimer’s disease in more than 17 years. The last approved drug was memantine in 2004. For information on memantine and other pharmaceuticals for dementia—including cholinesterase inhibitors, click here.

 

Which Symptoms Does Aducanumab / Aduhelm Help?

While Aducanumab doesn’t reverse or cure dementia, it may slow the loss of memory and general cognition (thinking ability) that are hallmark symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Orientation and language problems—like losing track of time and place, and not being able to name well-known objects—also improved in test subjects. The drug’s developer, Biogen, even specifically claimed that test subjects saw an increased ability to manage finances, do chores around the house, go shopping, and leave the home independently. That would mean Aducanumab helps with the instrumental acts of daily living (IADLs) that usually become too difficult for people with dementia somewhere around the middle stages of the disease.

 Clinical Trials: Currently, there are 3 open drug trials of Aducanumab. Links to each of the Phase 4 studies of Aducanumab can be found here:
Clinical Benefit of Aducanumab in Participants With Early Alzheimer’s Disease
Pharmacokinetic Comparability
Observational Study of Aducanumab-avwa in Participants With Alzheimer’s Disease

 

Side Effects of Aducanumab / Aduhelm

Patients taking Aducanumab have experienced swelling and bleeding in the brain, a side effect called “amyloid-related imaging abnormalities” (ARIA). Headache, balance problems leading to falls, stomach issues including diarrhea, and disorientation are also possible side effects.

The swelling or bleeding that comes from ARIA can be monitored via brain scans for people taking Aducanumab. The drugmaker recommends MRI scans that detect ARIA before the 7th and 12th infusions, as the problems typically develop in the first 12 to 16 weeks of treatment and are asymptomatic (meaning a person can’t feel them happening). During trials, ARIA was detected in 41% of people taking Aducanumab, compared to 10% of those in the control group who did not take the drug.

 

What Are The Criticisms of Aducanumab / Aduhelm?

Critics of aducanumab say that a closer look at the data from trials shows thinking improvements might be overblown or unrelated to the drug itself. There is even debate over whether targeting amyloid-beta plaques in the brain actually improves dementia symptoms. The “amyloid hypothesis” says that reducing the plaques will improve cognition, but this had not been shown to work in any drugs that went for FDA approval, until aducanumab became the first. Inflammation and brain cell death are other important factors of Alzheimer’s disease that aren’t related to amyloid-beta.

The bottom line is that some people question whether or not aducanumab works. In 2020, in fact, an advisory board of experts unanimously agreed (10-to-0) that aducanumab should not be approved as effective against Alzheimer’s disease. A year later, it was approved anyway.

Aducanumab is also expensive, initially costing about $4,312 per infusion or about $56,000 annually. Biogen has since lowered its cost to $28,800 annually.

Early in 2022 the board governing new medications in the European Union denied the request for Aducanumab to be marketed and sold to the public. They claimed the studies were not convincing in the effectiveness of the drug since Phase 3 had one trial failure and one success. Japanese officials followed suit and denied the approval based on Phase 3 studies not proving Aducanumab’s medical benefit.

 

Current Medicare and Medicaid Coverage Information of Aducanumab / Aduhelm

 As of April 2022, Medicare will only cover the cost of Aducanumab (and its associated tests like PET scans) if the patient is enrolled in an approved clinical trial.

New medications start with FDA approval, and then get priced by its manufacturer, and then insurance companies determine coverage. Medicare has set precedence of paying for all approved FDA drugs. However, the problem with Aduhelm boils down to money. Aduhelm was projected to have a large effect on Medicare’s spending due to its high price and large number of patients who qualify for treatment with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s symptoms. By conditionally providing coverage of the drug only in trials, it will make it accessible to thousands of people instead of the millions it was estimated to help.

 Did You Know? Aducanumab has been shown in reports to potentially cost Medicare more than any other medication. About two million people in the U.S. use Medicare to cover Alzheimer’s treatment. In response, Medicare Part B increased its monthly premiums by 14.5% in 2022. Medicare claimed this increase was mostly based on Aducanumab’s high price.

 

FDA Approval History of Aducanumab / Aduhelm

Aducanumab’s journey through the FDA approval process was a mix of promising developments and setbacks until its approval in June 2021. It was then announced that Aducanumab (brand name Aduhelm) had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration under the “accelerated approval” designation, and the drugmaker Biogen said it expected Aduhelm to be available in more than 900 doctor’s offices beginning the same month.

Accelerated approval is for drugs that can help with serious illnesses but also need more study. Even though Aduhelm is available to people with Alzheimer’s disease whose doctors believe it will help (and can administer the infusions in their offices), another phase (Phase 4) of trials is still ongoing. May 2022 is the start date. Biogen, the maker of Aducanumab, was given 9 years to complete the trials. Phase 4 will take four years to complete. If there is not more evidence in this phase that aducanumab is effective for treating symptoms of dementia, the drug might be pulled off the market.

The road to get to this step, has been a roller coaster for the drug developer Biogen. At one point, the company fully declared that testing would end, and then changed its mind. Aducanumab made it to Phase 3 before an announcement that testing had been halted. More than 3,000 patients were part of the trial, but after about 1,700 patients completed 18 months of treatment, Biogen said its researchers determined that statistical modeling (a “futility analysis”) showed the drug wouldn’t work well enough for FDA approval.

When more subjects completed the 18-month treatment, however, and a larger set of data was available, Biogen announced that findings were actually more promising. When assessments of progress in more than 3,000 subjects could be fully analyzed, benchmarks like their scores on the Mini-Mental State Exam (used to measure severity of thinking problems caused by Alzheimer’s) showed improvement compared to those who took a placebo. Also, brain scans showed a reduction in amyloid beta. The FDA approved the resumption of Stage 3 trials early in 2020.