Eisai/Pfizer's Aricept improves AD in Hispanics

Japanese drugmaker Eisai and USA-based Pfizer have presented results from an open-label study showing that Hispanics with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease experienced significant improvement in cognition compared to baseline after 12 weeks of treatment with Aricept (donepezil). The findings were reported at the 2008 International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, in Chicago, USA.

The first trial looking at an AD prescription drug exclusively in this population is important, given Hispanics' relatively high risk of AD. In the study, the Mini-Mental State Examination score, which measures cognitive function, significantly improved from baseline (p<0.0001) with a treatment effect that was similar to that seen in the pivotal studies for Aricept. The Fuld Object Memory Evaluation, which assesses learning and memory through common object recognition, also showed significant improvement with the drug (p=0.0042) in terms of retrieval scores.