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Millions of Alzheimer’s patients have been given hope after a new drug has been shown to slow memory decline by 27% over eighteen months. It's the biggest breakthrough in a generation.

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  1. DanBC
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    I find the reporting to be frustrating because it's using percentages to show a large relative increase instead of describing a small absolute increase. [EDIT: I feel that mass media needs to...

    I find the reporting to be frustrating because it's using percentages to show a large relative increase instead of describing a small absolute increase.

    [EDIT: I feel that mass media needs to avoid percentages if at all possible, because it's so easy to get it wrong, and even if the reporter gets it right many people in the audience simply don't understand the numbers. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3310025/

    "However numeracy is not a universal attribute. Gigerenzer et al show how only 25% of the general population could correctly identify 1 in 1000 as being the equivalent of 0.1%.7 Other studies have found that only 21% of a sample of well-educated adults could answer this question correctly, concluding that even highly-educated participants can have difficulty in understanding simple numeracy questions.8" --End Edit]

    https://twitter.com/ProfRobHoward/status/1597765848114290688?s=20&t=qXNMjymxXD1j88lSRAwhHQ

    All meds are described as a massive breakthrough, but they turn out to have either a modest but useful improvement over existing meds, or to be not much better than placebo. This has complex drivers, and isn't usually because of dishonesty on the part of medication manufacturers.

    Lecanemab attacks the sticky gunge - called beta amyloid - that builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's.

    The evidence for the amyloid hypothesis is pretty contentious.

    https://twitter.com/MadhavThambiset/status/1451193310224138251?s=20&t=qXNMjymxXD1j88lSRAwhHQ

    https://twitter.com/AlbertoEspay/status/1409234557291970562?s=20&t=qXNMjymxXD1j88lSRAwhHQ

    https://www.science.org/content/article/another-major-drug-candidate-targeting-brain-plaques-alzheimer-s-disease-has-failed

    7 votes