The medications have not been widely tested in Black people with the disease, underscoring stark — and persistent — disparities
Robert Williford, 67, receives a dose of Leqembi at Abington Neurological Associates in Abington, Pa. (Hannah Yoon for The Washington Post)
ABINGTON, Pa. — Wrapped in a purple blanket, Robert Williford settles into a quiet corner of a bustling neurology clinic, an IV line delivering a colorless liquid into his left arm.
The 67-year-old, who has early Alzheimer’s disease, is getting his initial dose of Leqembi. The drug is the first to clearly slow the fatal neurodegenerative ailment that afflicts 6.7 million older Americans, though the benefits may be modest. The retired social worker, one of the first African Americans to receive the treatment, hopes it will ease his forgetfulness so “I drive my wife less crazy.”
But as Williford and his doctors embark on this treatment, they are doing so with scant scientific data about how the medication might work in people of color. In the pivotal clinical trial for the drug, Black patients globally accounted for only 47 of the 1,795 participants — about 2.6 percent. For U.S. trial sites, the percentage was 4.5 percent.
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But brain scans showed that the African American volunteers were less likely to have excess amyloid than White patients and thus were excluded from the trial at higher rates. Almost half of Black applicants failed to meet the amyloid threshold, compared with 22 percent of White volunteers, according to Eisai. A similar pattern occurred with the Lilly drug and in some other studies, and sometimes involved other people of color, including Hispanics.
Experts are baffled by the findings. Why would amyloid levels — thought to be a key driver of Alzheimer’s — be different in people with similar cognitive problems?
“Is it the color of someone’s skin? Almost certainly not,” said Joshua D. Grill, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of California at Irvine. “Is it a difference in genetics? Or other health conditions, like cholesterol, blood pressure or vascular health? Or is it something else, that we haven’t measured?”
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