Budget

A number of scientists expressed, on Wednesday, November 30 (November), their satisfaction with the detailed results of a clinical study on a new drug that confirmed its effectiveness in slowing down… cognitive decline for patients with diseaseAlzheimer’s neurodegenerative, but they also talked about the potential for negative effects.

The full results of this advanced (Phase 3) clinical study of nearly 1,800 people followed over 18 months reported a 27 percent reduction in cognitive decline in patients treated with lecanemab, a Japanese pharmaceutical group. Eisai and the American Biogen.

It was previously announced at the end of last September about this percentage, which is considered “statistically significant”, according to the two groups.

side effects

But the full study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, also showed side effects reported for licanimab, sometimes severe and significantly more frequent than the placebo group.

It was found that 17.3 percent of patients who received “licanimab” suffered cerebral hemorrhage, while the rate was limited to 9 percent among those who took placebo.

And 12.6 percent of people who received this experimental drug experienced cerebral edema, compared to just 1.7 percent in the placebo group.

However, the overall death rate was nearly the same for the two groups of patients in the study (0.7% in people treated with licanimab and 0.8% in those treated with placebo).

A real treat

“This is the first drug that offers a real treatment option for people with Alzheimer’s,” said Bart de Strooper, director of the Institute of Dementia Research at the British Institute. medication for a longer period of time.

Alzheimer’s patients suffer from protein plaques called “amyloid” that form around nerve cells and eventually destroy them. Two major proteins, tau and beta-amyloid, accumulate abnormally in the brain, causing its cells to die and shrink.

Among the most prominent results of this is memory loss and the inability to perform daily tasks. This disease is considered one of the most important public health problems, as it affects more than 40 million people all over the world.

early stages

Licanimab targets beta-amyloid deposits, but only in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, which may limit its use because the disease is often diagnosed late.

Another drug developed by Biogen called Aduhelm, which also targets amyloid plaques, raised a lot of hopes in 2021 because it is the first drug approved in the United States against the disease since 2003.

But it also caused controversy, as it was opposed US Medicines Agency The opinion of an expert committee considered that the treatment had not been sufficiently effective during clinical trials, but the agency later restricted its use, limiting it to people with mild cases of the disease.

Nobody tells you that friendships can end suddenly, all of a sudden. Especially the ones you thought would last a lifetime. For Cheryl* and I, this happened before we had reached an important point in our relationship. We’d known each other for almost 10 years, going from college students in the prime of their lives to being friends and later roommates. I never expected that the relationship would crash and explode the way it did.

Cheryl’s bipolar disorder is older than our years of friendship. He reached a point where neither I nor our mutual friends could protect her from herself. I oscillated between crazy mania and severe depression. We always managed to get her off the cliff, but once she had a seizure Severe depression You couldn’t get rid of it. One day, I woke up and couldn’t find her. We went looking for her, worrying for hours. When we finally found her, we realized we couldn’t take care of her anymore. We did the only thing we could think of: we called the hospital and tried to get her there.

That hospital phone call was a death sentence for our friendship. Cheryl came home and I packed her stuff. I was heartbroken because I knew I would probably never speak to her again. She was so hurt by what we did – in her opinion, we tried to get her into the sanitarium. We didn’t take the decision lightly, but Google doesn’t give you the answer to the question, “What do you do when your girlfriend keeps trying to commit suicide?” Sheer desperation prompted us to act. I have mixed feelings about the call, as did others in our group of friends, because we knew she wouldn’t react well. Ultimately, we asked a professional therapist to decide for us. Was the action correct? I think so. But until now, I’m still confused.

may be consumed Mental illness completely human. The person who suffers from it may become unable to deal with daily life. But it can be difficult to talk about the impact he has on those around him. A large part of the conversation that took place during the previous years about mental health focused on supporting those who suffer in order to be in good mental health, which should happen, of course. It is very important that mental health is talked about, understood and supported socially and financially.

But this also makes it difficult to admit that making friends with people with a serious psychological problem can be very difficult at times. Sleepless nights occupied thinking about their safety is part of the relationship. You get so involved in their problems that they become yours too, in one way or another. I was confident that the kind of relationship I had with Cheryl would stand the test of time. When I bring it up now, I remember how hard we used to laugh at each other, and how full it made my heart feel. We talked about our old age together and imagined our future when we would be two rich old women. But our friendship was unable to continue because of her illness, which cut her off from her roots.

I feel so guilty about admitting that I couldn’t support a friend during her illness in the way she needed to. One person who understands this feeling is Tara Quinn Cirillo, a psychiatrist and associate fellow of the British Psychiatric Association. “The end of a friendship is difficult,” she tells me. “It can be painful, sad, and overwhelming… Principles can be tough. This is why it is important to direct friends towards professional services and other support devices. You may find that your role as a friend is ambiguous and you have to monitor them or even keep them safe.” “.

Difficult friendships do not come as a surprise to many who suffer from psychological problems, as many of them are well aware that their friendships may bear the brunt of their troubles. Sophie Rose, from London, was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder after years of dealing with extreme mood swings. Receiving the diagnosis, she says, made her better understand why many of the friendships she made during her college days ended – at the height of her anxiety.

“I would have manic episodes where I would spend time outside, meet a lot of people and act very excited and energetic for several weeks. Then I would get depressed and disappear for weeks on end. I only felt safe with myself. I didn’t tell any of my friends what was going on with me and it was hard for me,” she says. Making new friends because I felt compelled to pretend.”

“The situation I was in did not comfort me, and I did not want to admit that I was suffering. The easiest way to deal with it was to shut myself up. I thought I was helping people by not bothering them with my despondency…but the other party was upset that I simply disappeared. I was feeling guilty that I had been canceled The date is such that I feel after that that I do not deserve any friendships.

It may be the best example of bipolar disorder in popular culture It is the one shown by the drama series Modern Love, which is available through the Amazon Prime Video service. Anne Hathaway plays Lexi, a woman with bipolar disorder who tries to hide her illness from her friends and colleagues as she adjusts to life in New York City. Teri Cheney, whose 2008 New York Times article inspired Lexie’s story, told the newspaper shortly after the episode aired that she was “terrified” at the thought of making her condition public. She recalled that time, “I would simply hide from the world so that no one would see my condition. At work, I was productive and an outperformer. I managed to finish all the work I had accumulated. And that was the case at school as well. But I was always terrified that he would be found out.” Someone put me down, I get fired from my job, or no one likes me anymore.”

All this talk is very familiar to me. When Cheryl was going through her mania and hyperactivity episode, she was the shining star of every party, and I always looked dazed in front of her. Her ambition seemed endless and bottomless, and she was capable of anything. But then the depression sets in, and I watch helplessly as she withdraws from the world and spends long days in her room. You can reassure someone who is going through a crisis and tell them that you are there to support them time after time, but when these times accumulate, you will start to feel that you are useless. When you know you can’t pull them out of the dark. During these periods with Cheryl, I would wait and worry, longing for the moment when the clouds in her thoughts would clear up again.

“I realized that if you don’t communicate with your friends about your mental health, it becomes more difficult for them to support you in the way you need to,” says Rose.

Quinn-Cirillo reiterates that friends, no matter their mentality, should define their boundaries with each other. “Taking time to think about this aspect will help you maintain a healthy friendship and will help you to deal with situations in case the friendship goes through an ordeal,” she says. “Part of friendship is being able to respect each other’s needs and talk about those needs. Boundaries may include how and when you share information.” How often you contact each other, lend money, or it could even be boundaries about respecting opinions, ideas, emotional states, and personal space—for example, how much you want someone to touch you.”

Since receiving the diagnosis and beginning to take medication to stabilize her mood, Rose says she is doing much better. She also adds that being open to friends about her condition and figuring out what she wants when times get tough has helped her tremendously. But her journey was not easy, and Rose only reached the turning point in her life when she became suicidal.

She advises anyone struggling to maintain friendships while battling a mental illness to be very honest. She explains that “it can be difficult sometimes and you have to prioritize yourself. Which means that you will lose friends on the road.”

But hope is also there. “Many of your friends will choose to stay with you. Some people will always want to have your back and they are great and you have to love them very much. You may lose the friendship of someone you thought would be your best friend until the end of life, and it’s no one’s fault. But you have to keep opening channels of communication and letting them know what’s going on.” It happens with you and you will discover who your true friends are and receive the best possible support.”

The last time I spoke to Cheryl was before I moved abroad. I bid her farewell and wished her well. She reciprocated my wishes in the same way, kindly and rigorously. I cried because of the emotional chasm between us, feeling that it was wider than all the actual miles I had traveled. I miss her. But when I get word from others that she’s at her best, I feel so happy. In the end, I know what happened between us is the healthy and responsible thing to do for everyone involved. Even if it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through.

*Names changed