September 18, 2014

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

George Vradenburg talks about the Alzheimer's fear factor, Nick Manetto highlights a shift in patient advocacy, and Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel talks about the reasons he hopes to die at 75 (read more).  
 

Must reads

  • A September 17, 2014 WTOP article reported on new polling that reveals Alzheimer's is the most feared disease. According to the article, "A new poll shows that Alzheimer's is the disease Americans fear most, even those in their 20's and 30's. "There is no question that this is now inter-generational," says George Vradenburg, chairman and founder of the advocacy group USAgainstAlzheimer's. Vradenburg says there is a certain fear factor connected to the disease and predicts that "we are going to see a number of people in their earlier years beginning to be much more attentive to their brain health.""
  • A September 17, 2014 The Hill opinion piece by Nick Manetto highlighted changes in patient advocacy and underscored the importance of innovation and collaboration to address pressing health issues like Alzheimer's. According Manetto, "In 2011, the Alzheimer’s community succeeded in enacting the National Alzheimer’s Project Act, which required the administration to develop a plan to address Alzheimer’s. While the law did not require an increase in funding for Alzheimer’s programs, it led to the national goal of preventing and treating the disease by 2025 which has in turn driven lawmakers to increase funding for Alzheimer’s programs…The outcome of 21st Century Cures remains to be written, but these recent successes demonstrate that opportunities exist for patient advocates to achieve meaningful progress on important federal legislative and regulatory issues. Rather than the new programs and increased funding of yesterday, successes today and tomorrow will more likely come in the form of accelerating innovations with limited federal support, or eliminating or reducing barriers. For patient groups willing to innovate, create and collaborate, opportunity abounds."
  • A September 17, 2014 The Atlantic article by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel underscored the reasons he hopes to die at 75, including a fear of Alzheimer's. According to Dr. Emanuel, "As Crimmins puts it, over the past 50 years, health care hasn’t slowed the aging process so much as it has slowed the dying process. And, as my father demonstrates, the contemporary dying process has been elongated. Death usually results from the complications of chronic illness—heart disease, cancer, emphysema, stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes…The situation becomes of even greater concern when we confront the most dreadful of all possibilities: living with dementia and other acquired mental disabilities. Right now approximately 5 million Americans over 65 have Alzheimer’s; one in three Americans 85 and older has Alzheimer’s. And the prospect of that changing in the next few decades is not good. Numerous recent trials of drugs that were supposed to stall Alzheimer’s—much less reverse or prevent it—have failed so miserably that researchers are rethinking the whole disease paradigm that informed much of the research over the past few decades. Instead of predicting a cure in the foreseeable future, many are warning of a tsunami of dementia—a nearly 300 percent increase in the number of older Americans with dementia by 2050." Ezekiel Emanuel is director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and heads the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
  • A September 17, 2014 The Atlantic article highlighted the importance of improving "health spans" in conjunction with life spans. According to the article, "If health span can be improved, the costs of aging-related disability may be manageable. Not that long ago, vast sums were spent on iron lungs and sanitariums for treatment of polio: preventing the disease has proved much less expensive than treating it. If chronic ailments related to aging can be prevented or significantly delayed, big-ticket line items in Medicare might not go off the rails. But if health span does not improve, longer life could make disability in aging an economic crisis. Today, Medicare and Medicaid spend about $150 billion annually on Alzheimer’s patients. Absent progress against aging, the number of people with Alzheimer’s could treble by 2050, with society paying as much for Alzheimer’s care as for the current defense budget." 
Regional 
  • A September 18, 2014 West Hartford News reported that Home Instead Senior Care is raising awareness of Alzheimer's by encouraging individuals touched by Alzheimer's to create "memory boxes" to help "create positive emotional experiences, reduce stress and provide a better quality of life."