Alzheimer's disease is the world's most common neurodegenerative disease, affecting more than 50 million people globally. Alzheimer's disease is also among the most fatal, landing as one of the top five causes of death worldwide. However, most currently available treatments are limited to alleviating the disease's symptoms.
Now, a new study led by Chapman University researchers has explored the efficacy of using two existing Alzheimer's disease drugs simultaneously to reduce mortality. It is one of the largest and most comprehensive Alzheimer's treatment studies to date. The study, "Combine use of Donepezil and Memantine increases the probability of five-year survival of Alzheimer's disease patients", was released this month in Communications Medicine , finds that combining the use of the two most common Alzheimer's disease drugs, Donepezil and Memantine, could extend the lives of approximately 303,000 people with Alzheimer's Disease living in the USA beyond five years from diagnosis.
The senior author is Cyril Rakovski, Professor and Program Director for the Faculty of Computational and Data Sciences. The researchers studied the anonymized medical data of 12,744 patients who were diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, focusing on patients receiving the three most common treatments to treat the disease: the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor Donepezil (28.94%), the NMDA receptor antagonist Memantine (10.
7%), and combined use of Donepezil and Memantine (9.11%). Approximately half of .
