'Brain shrinkage alert' for dementia medicine

DEMENTIA experts have raised the alarm over "big gaps in data" around Alzheimer's wonder drugs amid concerns they can cause the brain to shrink.

- Hanna Geissler

The first medication proven to slow the disease's progression could be approved by UK regulators as early as next week.

But in a dramatic last-minute intervention, pharma firms were accused of "betraying the hopes of patients" by failing to release enough information from trials.

Professor Rob Howard, an expert in old-age psychiatry at University College London, warned that imaging data "does seem to suggest that people are actually losing probably slightly more than a teaspoon of brain.