Monoclonal anti-amyloid antibody treatment: the epidemiological profile of the target patients in Austria and the status of treatment-eligible patients registered at an outpatient memory clinic

The development of monoclonal anti-amyloid antibodies, a disease-modifying treatment for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), has raised the necessity to identify the epidemiological profile of the possible target patients who would benefit from such therapy.

These are patients in the early stages of AD with biomarker-confirmed brain amyloid positivity.

In this study, the epidemiological profile of possible target patients in Austria and Vienna was estimated.

The number of patients in the stage of amyloid-beta (Aβ)-positive prodromal AD in Austria and Vienna are 193,500 and 34,700 patients, respectively.

The expected patient demand for the upcoming therapy in Austria and Vienna are 61,200 and 11,100 patients, respectively.

In the memory clinic of the Vienna General Hospital, the number of treatment-eligible patients for an upcoming anti-amyloid antibody was on average 52.8 patients per year, which is about 10% of the total number of patients visiting the memory clinic every year.

Several challenges to provide therapy to the general population include expanding the MCI screening in primary care and increasing the capacity of the healthcare system for biomarker testing, infusion delivery, and ARIA management.

The study primarily addresses the status quo of identifying patients on memory clinics through cognitive screening and biomarker testing.