Important Facts For Prelims
World’s First Drug for Alzheimer’s Disease
- 05 Nov 2019
- 2 min read
Recently, China has approved the world’s first multi-targeting and carbohydrate-based drug GV-971 for Alzheimer’s disease.
- Multi-target drugs hit several targets in the body, which is often necessary to do in order to yield a therapeutic effect in complex diseases like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. This is different from most drugs which target only a single biological substance, like a protein or enzyme.
GV-971
- It has been extracted from brown algae and can treat mild to moderate forms of the disease and improve cognition.
- This is the only drug out of more than 320 developed by pharmaceutical companies around the globe to survive clinical trials for treating Alzheimer’s.
- The medicine can be taken orally by the patients.
Alzheimer's Disease
- It is an irreversible and progressive brain disorder.
- The disease slowly destroys memory, thinking ability and the capability to carry out simple tasks.
- The possibility of Alzheimer’s increases as the age of the population increases.
- Nearly 50 million people are affected by the disease and the number is expected to increase.
- China has the highest Alzheimer's affected the population in the world.
