On his Twitter account, the president recalled that these tests will begin throughout the country on Monday and considered this step as “a new challenge and a new contribution from Cuba’s science.”
According to press reports, classification consults will begin in Havana on February 27 to include 413 patients, and a phase III clinical trial will also be carried out in the rest of the country with 1,456 patients.
The information was made public at a workshop with the participation of experts from medical institutions in this capital, including the Center for State Control of Medicines, Medical Equipment and Devices, and researchers from the Molecular Immunology Center (CIM) and Cimab S.A.
The patients included in Havana will be diagnosed with the disease from the clinical and molecular points of view, while those from the rest of the country will only be diagnosed through clinical diagnosis, due to the complexity of this kind of research.
The trial in Havana will last 18 months, while in the other provinces it will take to years, each with intermediate analyzes to evaluate the effects of the drug.
Dr. Nelson Gomez Viera, head of the Neurology service at the Hermanos Ameijeiras Clinical Surgical Hospital, explained that this stage will reinforce the evidence obtained in the administration of NeuralCIM in mild and moderate Alzheimer’s disease.
For this, the results of the product will be analyzed in comparison with Donepezil (drug used in the world to treat dementia) and in combination with it.
Dementia in general and Alzheimer’s disease in particular are growing health problems in the world as a consequence of the aging of the population, one of its causes.
According to estimates, around 55 million people worldwide suffer from dementia and by 2040 there will be around 130 million, while in Cuba research carried out over the last 20 years shows a prevalence of dementia of 10.2 percent in people aged 65 years and more.
The specialist specified that 60 percent of the cases are Alzheimer’s disease and currently some 160,000 people suffer from dementia, which represents 1.3 percent of the Cuban population.
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