The National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) released a new medicine, Leqembi, for the treatment of patients diagnosed in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The approval was published in the Official Gazette of the Union on December 22, 2025.
According to the Ministry of Health, more than one million people live with Alzheimer’s disease in Brazil. Until today, there was no treatment aimed at the disease itself, only its consequences.
The medicine is indicated to delay the cognitive decline of people who already have mild dementia caused by the disease. In practice, it acts against the sticky substance that accumulates in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s, called beta-amyloid. The accumulation of these plaques is one of the defining characteristics of the disease.
The drug’s effectiveness was demonstrated in a study published in 2022 in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most important scientific journals in the world. The study involved 1,795 volunteers with early-stage Alzheimer’s. After 18 months of treatment, lecanemab reduced the patients’ cognitive-functional decline, indicating a slower progression of the disease.
