Fantastic news coming out of America today as a US drug firm says it has produced the first treatment that can slow Alzheimer's disease, and it is now keen to bring it to the marketplace.
Presently, there are no drugs that can do this, current ones only help with the symptoms.
Biogen says it will soon seek regulatory approval in the US for the "ground-breaking" drug, called aducanumab.
It plans to file the paperwork in early 2020 and has its sights on Europe too.
Approval processes could take a year or two. If successful, the company aims to initially offer the drug to patients previously enrolled in clinical studies of the drug.
The announcement is somewhat surprising because the company had discontinued work on the drug in March 2019, after disappointing trial results.
But the company says a new analysis of a larger dataset of the same studies shows that higher doses of aducanumab can provide a significant benefit to patients with early Alzheimer's, slowing their clinical decline, so they preserve more of their memory and everyday living skills, which the disease usually robs.
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Steve Simmonds
Credits and sources, BBC and Getty images for the cover picture