Every fortnight, retired business owner Carolyn Davis drives more than 300 miles from her home in Florida’s Pensacola Beach to a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, for an hour-long infusion of a novel medicine that promises to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
After four years plagued by acute memory loss since her diagnosis, Davis credits Leqembi — which last year became the first fully approved treatment in the US for Alzheimer’s, the most common type of dementia — with restoring a sense of normality.
“I used to forget the tiniest everyday things: I’d put eggs on to boil, I’d forget. Papers were stacked four feet high on my desk,” said Davis, 74. Since commencing the fortnightly infusions last November, her cognition scores have improved 20 per cent.