Experience with Donanemab and Lecanemab

Posted by spoolly @spoolly, Aug 11, 2025

My wife has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and her Mayo neurologist recommended treatment with either Donanemab or Lecanemab. Does anyone have any experience with either of these drugs? It seems like we have a million questions.
How do you choose between the two?
The infusion time with either one is relatively short, but sounds like your actual time is much longer. Are you generally able to get by with one day of medical each cycle?
How bad are the side effects? Are you potentially losing 18 months of relatively good time during the disease progression while you go through treatment?
There are numerous articles which question whether the benefits from the clinical trial will actually follow in actual practice. What kind of actual experience have people experienced?
I am not sure why our family and myself seem to be questioning this treatment. My wife is a three time ovarian cancer survivor. She has obviously been through quite a great deal from a medical standpoint. The medical community and specifically Mayo has saved her. If one of these treatments will help there is no question we will proceed. I am sure part of our hesitation is in our situation the treatment cannot be done at Mayo.

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Caregivers: Dementia Support Group.

Hi. Does medicare cover the cost of these drugs? If not, may I ask how much each treatment costs?

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Profile picture for theglobalnomad1 @theglobalnomad1

My husband has had 4 monthly infusions of Kisunla so far and has no after effects whatsoever. He does have a reaction initially (gets very hot, flushed when infusion is started, but they stop it, add something like Benadryl or Pepcid to the infusion and restart it in a few minutes and he's fine! We have spoken with a woman who just completed 18 months of it and she feels it has made a huge difference. Don't delay making the decision because it's my understanding that it's only indicated in the early stages of Alzheimer's and after a certain point they won't give it to you.

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@theglobalnomad1
Thank you so much for the valuable feedback.

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Profile picture for suezann @suezann

Hi. Does medicare cover the cost of these drugs? If not, may I ask how much each treatment costs?

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@suezann , I don’t know. Hopefully, someone will chime in about it.

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