Analysis of Costs for Imaging-Assisted Pharmaceutical Intervention in Alzheimer’s Disease with Lecanemab: Snapshot of the First 3 Years

Abstract

Background: The approval of lecanemab for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States has sparked controversy over issues of safety, cost, and efficacy. Furthermore, the prognostication of cognitive decline is prohibitively difficult with current methods. The inability to forecast incipient dementia in patients with biological AD suggests a prophylactic scenario wherein all patients with cognitive decline are prescribed anti-AD drugs at the earliest manifestations of dementia; however, most patients with mild cognitive impairment (approximately 77.7%) do not develop dementia over a 3-year period. Prophylactic response therefore constitutes unethical, costly, and unnecessary treatment for these patients. Objective: We present a snapshot of the costs associated with the first 3 years of mass availability of anti-AD drugs in a variety of scenarios. Methods: We consider multiple prognostication scenarios with varying sensitivities and specificities based on neuroimaging studies in patients with mild cognitive impairment to determine approximate costs for the large-scale use of lecanemab. Results: The combination of fluorodeoxyglucose and magnetic resonance was determined to be the most cost-efficient at $177,000 for every positive outcome every 3 years under an assumed adjustment in the price of lecanemab to $9,275 per year. Conclusions: Imaging-assisted identification of cognitive status in patients with prodromal AD is demonstrated to reduce costs and prevent instances of unnecessary treatment in all cases considered. This highlights the potential of this technology for the ethical prescription of anti-AD medications under a paradigm of imaging-assisted early detection for pharmaceutical intervention in the treatment of AD.