Newswise — An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration yesterday recommended the drug memantine as a safe and effective treatment for patients who have moderate to severe cases of Alzheimer's disease. If the FDA follows the recommendation by the advisory panel, memantine will be sold in the United States. The drug currently is available in Germany.
"This is significant because memantine is the first drug that has shown promise in treating patients who have moderate to advanced Alzheimer's disease," says George Grossberg, M.D., director of the division of geriatric psychiatry at Saint Louis University School of Medicine.
Dr. Grossberg has conducted more research on memantine than any other physician in the Midwest. This week Dr. Grossberg presented new research data at the annual meeting of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology that showed combining memantine with one of the current medications for Alzheimer's disease worked better than the current medication alone to improve cognition and behavior for patients with moderate to severe cases of the disease. Dr. Grossberg currently has nearly 100 patients who are taking memantine to treat Alzheimer's disease.
He can discuss what the findings mean to patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease and their families.
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