The Washington Post accuses a pharmaceutical company of blocking medical data for Alzheimer's

Health and Medical

The Washington Post highlighted a pharmaceutical company that hid data showing that one of its arthritis drugs could reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

The company kept its results in closed files for more than three years because it claims to have "not believed that the evidence is strong enough."

Injection for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis

The link between Alzheimer's disease and injections originally used to treat arthritis was found when analyzing medical insurance in hundreds of thousands of people in the United States.

People who use injections used to treat rheumatoid arthritis appear to be 64 percent less likely to have a memory breakdown.

But after years of discussion, the company decided not to disclose what it found, according to a document seen by The Washington Post.

Experts doubt the reasons for the company's lack of involvement in its "strong" data as scientists dig deeper into a cure for Alzheimer's disease.

One suggested some reasons

The search for money The desire to not allow others to take advantage of the reason behind this decision because the invention of the injection is almost over.

The company told Daily Mail that this claim was incorrect and its decision not to publish it was "first and foremost the scientific rationale."

Researchers working for the $ 235 billion (£ 184 billion) company were urged to start a clinical trial to deepen their findings in 2015.

This could have included 3,000 to 4,000 people, which took four years and cost the company $ 80 million (£ 63 million), according to her estimates.

After internal discussions, the New York-based firm decided in 2018 not to proceed with an experiment and not to tell the research community what it found.

In defending its decision not to conduct further research, the company said it believed the chances of success in a clinical trial were low.

She added her findings from an analysis of insurance claims, which included hundreds of thousands of people, did not meet "rigorous" scientific standards.

"Professor Robert Howard, a senior psychiatrist at the University of London College, saidMailOnline: "I find that the company's decision is difficult to understand really."

"To be fair to pharmaceutical companies, they are not charitable organizations and we have to understand that they are commercial entities with primary responsibility for their shareholders, but without them we will not have new medicines, and I think they have a greater responsibility for science."

But one of the researchers, Professor Clive Holmes of the University of Southampton, noted that market forces were behind the company's decision to keep their discovery hidden.

The 20-year-old patent for the injection was implemented in 2018. Other manufacturers can now produce cheaper generic forms of medicine, and the company can not obtain a new patent for Alzheimer's treatment. The profits would have been shared among pharmaceutical companies around the world.

The pharmaceutical companies should make the results "as widely available as possible" as part of their role in the development of new therapies, the British Alzheimer's Research Foundation said.

Alzheimer's (t) Alzheimer's disease (t) The latest drug to treat Alzheimer's (t) rheumatoid arthritis