Making Sense of Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials

Deborah Kan is an award-winning journalist and founder of Being Patient. In this “Thought of the Week” column each Friday, she highlights one of the key stories shaping the future of brain science. 

Dear readers,

I get a version of this call almost every week. A friend’s parent has just been diagnosed. Or a doctor has suggested a clinical trial to the family, and they don’t know what to do. The questions are always the same: What do these drugs do? Is this trial worth considering? And how am I supposed to know?

Trials are one of the most confusing parts of the Alzheimer’s landscape and an important decision a family can face. What does a particular drug actually do inside the brain? How are researchers approaching prevention versus treatment? What does the data show about who benefits, who doesn’t, and at what risk? 

We will never tell you to enroll in a specific trial. That’s not our role, and it shouldn’t be. But we believe you deserve information clear enough to make an informed decision alongside your doctor and your family.

That’s why we publish our quarterly clinical trials update, a newsletter that walks you through the current pipeline in plain language: what’s being studied, what the open questions are, and where the science is heading next. It also includes perspectives from other participants about what their experience was like in a trial.

What sets this apart from what you’ll often find from some advocacy organizations is our editorial independence. We also don’t soften coverage because a company is advertising on our site. We report on research with honesty, and we report on the studies that don’t hold up under scrutiny.

If you want to stay informed about what researchers are actually learning about the brain, how they are approaching prevention, and which drugs are moving through development, sign up for our quarterly trials update here.

We hope you find this resource helpful. The next one is coming Monday.

With hope,
Deborah