Pharmaceutical company Elan has said it has modified clinical trials of a potential treatment for Alzheimer’s disease following the deaths of nine patients receiving high doses of the trial drug.
The clinical trials were taking place in the US.
Elan says no direct relationship between the deaths and high doses of the ELND005 drug has been established.
The company was testing the drug with another pharmaceutical company, Transition Therapeutics, with whom it has a commercial agreement.
Elan and Transition say the nine deaths were in two groups of patients receiving 2000mg and 4000mg of the drug daily (in two doses per day).
A total of 353 patients were involved in the trials and the decision to drop them was agreed with the Independent Safety Monitoring Committee.
The drug being tested is in an 18 month trial which began in October - it is in phase two which looks at safety of drugs.
Elan is testing four different doses of the drug and following the deaths of nine patients it has removed the two higher doses from the trial.
Elan shares were down almost 3% on the news, but are now 1% lower.
Brokers say a high number of such trials end in failure while little of Elan's share value would be dependant on a successful outcome of these Alzheimer drug trials.
