A prospective cohort followed 187 amyloid-positive patients with early Alzheimer's disease starting lecanemab at a tertiary memory clinic. Physical frailty was defined by the Short Physical Performance Battery, and sarcopenia by the 2019 Asian Working Group criteria. Frail patients worsened 1.52 points a year faster on the CDR-SB dementia rating, and patients with sarcopenia 1.40 points faster. Frailty was linked to more infusion-related reactions (adjusted odds ratio 4.75), but not to amyloid-related imaging abnormalities or stopping treatment. Neither frailty nor sarcopenia was linked to change in Mini-Mental State Examination score or plasma p-tau217 trajectories. This was a single-clinic study, and imaging abnormality events were too few for standard regression.
Why it is interesting: Frailty and sarcopenia are known to shape Alzheimer's progression, but their role during anti-amyloid therapy was unclear. Frailty on a simple physical performance test was linked to faster clinical decline and more infusion reactions on lecanemab.
Cite this item
BibTeX
Free sign-up. A digest of the new papers twice a week, grouped by domain.
Other drivers in Health today
-
Cancer
Where is cancer incidence rising and falling, what screening and new tests find earlier, and what treatment has done to survival.
14 this week -
Obesity, diabetes and GLP-1
Are obesity and diabetes still rising, what behavioural change and public policy do, and what difference do GLP-1s and other similar drugs make.
9 this week -
Heart and stroke
Whether deaths from heart disease and stroke have stopped falling, what is found earlier, what treatment and prevention do now, and what the deaths say.
7 this week -
Mental health
Deaths by suicide, the life expectancy gap in severe mental illness, and the physical disease that follows it: what mental illness costs in lives.
6 this week -
Dementia
Whether dementia is becoming more or less common, what is now found, what treatment and prevention do, and what the deaths say.
5 this week -
Frailty and multimorbidity
Whether the years added after 85 are healthy ones, how frailty and multiple conditions are measured, and where the data run out.
3 this week
