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Enbrel (Etanercept) studies re inflammation and a potential treatment for Alzheimer’s disease is back in the news.

Wally

Senior Member
Messages
1,167
“Pfizer had clues its blockbuster drug could prevent Alzheimer’s. Why didn’t it tell the world?

“A team of researchers inside Pfizer made a startling find in 2015: The company’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis therapy Enbrel, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug, appeared to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 64 percent.

The results were from an analysis of hundreds of thousands of insurance claims. Verifying that the drug would actually have that effect in people would require a costly clinical trial — and after several years of internal discussion, Pfizer opted against further investigation and chose not to make the data public, the company confirmed. . . .

The company told The Post that it decided during its three years of internal reviews that Enbrel did not show promise for Alzheimer’s prevention because the drug does not directly reach brain tissue. It deemed the likelihood of a successful clinical trial to be low. A synopsis of its statistical findings prepared for outside publication, it says, did not meet its “rigorous scientific standards.’’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...fc796cf2ec0_story.html?utm_term=.fa4402600d14

Other scientists interviewed for the Post article disagreed with Pfizer’s conclusion that the drug did not show enough correlation to Alzheimer’s disease to not pursue further study either by the company or by making the information public, so it could be studied by other researchers. Was this a decision based primarily on money, patents and drug development intellectual property rights?

How is this information relevant to ME/CFS? If neuro inflammation is an important element of Alzheimer’s, ME/CFS and other illnesses such as Lyme, ALS, Parkinson’s, MS, Autism etc.. could.the information developed as a result of Pfizer’s Enbrel drug studies hold important clues to help in the study of neuro inflammation in these other illnesses? What legal vs. moral responsibility does a drug manufacturer have to disclose both negative and possible positive findings that they uncover in their study of a particular drug?

Here are a couple of threads where there were earlier discussions about Enbrel, Alzheimers’s and ME/CFS.
1) https://forums.phoenixrising.me/thr...ments-mella-fluge-research.16068/#post-299725
2) https://forums.phoenixrising.me/threads/enbrel-next-after-rituximab.19554/#post-299838
3) https://forums.phoenixrising.me/threads/australian-sixty-minutes-show-interesting-segment.29917/
 
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