Get Healthy!
- Posted August 11, 2026
Real-World Performance Of Alzheimer's Drug Matches Trial Data, Study Finds
Sally Osmer jumped at the chance to be treated with the cutting-edge Alzheimer’s drug lecanemab.
Osmer has a family history of the disease, and was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s at age 74. She didn’t notice any problems at first, but imaging and genetic testing confirmed the diagnosis.
“When I got the diagnosis, it was pretty devastating,” she said in a news release. “The prospect of having a slow decline but being physically healthy is very frightening. We were fortunate to catch it early, and I was pleased to begin treatment.”
Osmer is one of hundreds of patients who’ve shown that the new Alzheimer’s drug is as safe in the real world as it was in the clinical trials that led to its approval in July 2023, a new study says.
Some experts were concerned that lecanemab (Leqembi) would cause swelling and bleeding as it flushed toxic amyloid proteins from patients’ brains.
“There’s been a lot of fear about this medication, especially around brain swelling and bleeding,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Liu, an associate professor of neurology and pathology at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina.
Real-world results show that the drug’s safety and effectiveness among patients aligns closely to results from clinical trials, researchers said.
“What we found is that, in the real world, with careful selection and close monitoring, approximately 80% of patients are able to remain on lecanemab for at least one year," Liu said in a news release. "Importantly, most treatment-related side effects resolve over time without the need for additional medications or hospitalizations.”
For the study, researchers tracked 230 patients treated with lecanemab at Duke between 2023 and 2025. The patients all had early Alzheimer’s disease or mild memory impairment.
Results showed that 79% of patients who started the treatment were able to continue it for more than a year. The 21% who dropped the drug did so mostly due to side effects.
About a quarter of the patients (24%) developed Amyloid Related Imaging Abnormalities (ARIA), signs of brain swelling or bleeding that show up in MRI scans.
Osmer has now completed more than a year on lecanemab, without any serious side effects.
“It’s been very uneventful in terms of side effects,” she said.
Osmer said the treatment has provided a great deal of reassurance in her day-to-day life.
“I have dealt with a lot of anxiety about my current life and the future,” she said. “Being on lecanemab definitely gives me a sense of hope and a promise for a better future than we’ve assumed about Alzheimer’s in the past.”
Researchers found that people carrying the Alzheimer’s disease risk gene APOE4 were about four times as likely to develop ARIA.
However, seven other common tests could not reliably predict who would develop ARIA while taking lecanemab, researchers said.
The team currently is working on an AI-driven imaging tool intended to help detect subtle ARIA changes earlier and more consistently in brain scans.
“Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), a condition characterized by silent buildup of amyloid in the brain’s blood vessels, is present in over 50% of all Alzheimer’s patients, and is one of the mechanisms thought to underlie ARIA,” senior researcher Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy said in a news release. He’s a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and medicine at Duke.
“Our study highlights the urgent need to develop better tests to predict who will develop serious ARIA and to know when it is safe to resume treatment,” Doraiswamy said.
Researchers did emphasize that lecanemab does not cure Alzheimer’s disease or reverse symptoms, but can slow its progression.
“This is about buying time in a disease that takes it away,” Liu said. “And our real-world experience shows that with careful risk-benefit assessments, time can be gained by many patients.”
More information
The Alzheimer’s Association has more about lecanemab.
SOURCE: Duke Health, news release, Aug. 7, 2026
