The drugs work exactly as designed—scrubbing toxic protein plaques from the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. The problem, a recent major analysis found, is that clearing the plaques doesn’t seem to help the condition.
A comprehensive review, published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, evaluated seven monoclonal antibody drugs developed over the last 20 years to target amyloid beta, a protein that forms plaques in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
