World leaders are expected to make their strongest pledges to tackle dementia for 10 years at the G7 summit in Hiroshima as degenerative brain diseases impose a growing burden on the global economy and effective treatments for dementia begin to emerge. Alzheimers.
The Government of Japan is hosting a meeting of global dementia organizations in Nagasaki this weekend ahead of the summit starting May 19. Tokyo hopes the conference will pave the way for an updated statement, matching the scope of commitments made at the G8 London summit in 2013.
The statement is likely to include pledges such as increased research funding, improved access to care, and increased international cooperation to address Alzheimer’s disease and some of the approximately 100 less common forms of dementia.
“The London Summit made historic commitments to improve the lives of people living with dementia and to accelerate the development of disease-modifying medicines,” said Lenny Shallcross, executive director of the World Dementia Council, set up in 2013 to help governments meet those commitments.
“Governments today face very different challenges now that we have the first disease-modifying drugs, biomarkers that could show who might benefit, and citizens who will expect to be treated,” he said.
The first two drugs Donanemab from Eli Lilly of the United States and lecanemab developed by Japan’s Eisai with US biotech Biogen shown in clinical trials to slow the progression of the disease reduce the buildup of sticky amyloid proteins in the brains of people suffering from Alzheimer’s.
A survey of Alzheimer’s drug development pipeline in 2022 by Jeffrey Cummings and colleagues at the University of Nevada showed that companies and academic laboratories around the world are working on 143 drugs with a wide variety of different mechanisms in addition to targeting amyloid.
Japan is particularly concerned with dementia, as it has one of the oldest populations in the world, with around 30% over the age of 65.
“The summit in Japan will allow us to shine a spotlight on dementia, which has become the first or second cause of death in five of the seven G7 members,” said Paola Barbarino, chief executive of Alzheimer’s Disease International, a dementia federation associations. She added that 60% of healthcare workers “wrongly think dementia is not a disease but part of normal aging.”
George Vradenburg, founding president of the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative, an international foundation promoting innovation in dementia treatment, said the 2013 G8 summit had an initial galvanizing effect on the field, but the long-term response was inadequate. .
“I am disappointed that governments have not taken a more coordinated approach,” he said.
The US government alone has pushed through a large and sustained increase in Alzheimer’s research funding, which has increased tenfold from $400 million to $4 billion annually over a decade, Vradenburg said. “Publicly funded research needs to be scaled up everywhere, including in low- and middle-income countries, to provide a foundation for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries to develop new treatments.”
The inclusion of dementia on Japan’s G7 agenda “shows that governments are putting the spotlight more on the issue,” said Shallcross. Another high-level conference has been organized by the Dutch government for the autumn.
Paola Barbarino, chief executive officer of Alzheimer’s Disease International, said 60% of healthcare professionals “wrongly think dementia is not a disease but part of normal ageing” © David Woolfall
Dementia will also feature prominently at the World Health Assembly next week, Barbarino said. The Geneva meeting will address the failure of most World Health Organization member states to develop national plans for dementia as agreed in a global action plan in 2017.
“Inaction means health systems are unprepared, despite emerging therapeutic breakthroughs, leaving millions unable to access the care and support they need,” he said.
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