Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

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Alzheimer’s patients are hanging in there with blarcamesine.

On the Alzheimer Ph-2b/3 trial he said there was over 90% that elected to continue. That is a huge number for a CNS drug.

Thanks for posting this. Indeed, “a huge number for a CNS drug.”

New, proposed drugs, acting in the central nervous system are particularly prone to producing discomforting side effects; things that cause trial participants to drop out. Apparently, not a factor with blarcamesine being tested against Alzheimer’s.

Keeping 90% in a big, long Phase 3 Alzheimer’s clinical trial, by itself, is significant. People with active, advancing Alzheimer’s tend to be elderly. Many will have co-morbidities, other pathologies that, likewise, can cause pains and other symptoms that prompt people to stop participating in a trial. And, of course, in trials involving older people there can be deaths.

Just as before, in all of the previous clinical trials of blarcamesine against Alzheimer’s (Phase 1 and 2, etc.) nothing negative appeared. If the drug wasn’t working, a good number of participants would just give up, not subject themselves to the continuing tests, etc. If the drug produced objectionable side effects, dropouts would have been even greater.

A 10% dropout rate late in a big Phase 3 clinical trial of a new drug working against, of all things, Alzheimer’s can only be positive. The drug is working, safely. Participants are staying in the study — perhaps to some degree with the anticipation that they will be qualified to continue with the drug after the study ends.

Next fall, we’ll find out.