October 22, 2014

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

Famed Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee dies after long battle with Alzheimer's, the Assisted Living Federation sits down with USA2 board member Jill Lesser, and one neuropsychologist's battle against Alzheimer's in the African-American community (read more). 
 

Must reads

  • An October 22, 2014 USA Today article reported that "Ben Bradlee, the former executive editor of The Washington Post who led the newspaper's Watergate coverage that brought down the Nixon administration, died Tuesday after years of battle with Alzheimer's disease."
  • An October 21, 2014 Assisted Living Federation of America blog post highlighted USA2's WomenAgainstAlzheimer's network and recent WA2 Summit. According to the post, "To focus more on the issues special to women when it comes to Alzheimer’s disease, US Against Alzheimer’s launched the Women Against Alzheimer’s Network in earnest about two years ago. (The organization also has networks focusing on other groups affected by the disease too, such as Latinas, researchers and clergy, for example.) “Women fit into an interesting place when it comes to Alzheimer’s. Women make up the vast majority of Alzheimer’s patients and caregivers, but it’s not thought of as a women’s disease,” says Jill Lesser, a co-founder of Women Against Alzheimer’s, board member of the umbrella organization and whose mother has the disease. “Women are leaving jobs, taking on caring for Alzheimer’s while caring for children and it’s having a huge impact on family. It’s a broader impact that hasn’t been brought to light.”"
  • An October 21, 2014 New York Times Old Age blog post posed the question "is it really dementia?" According to the post, "That’s what you tell yourself, isn’t it, when an older person begins to lose her memory, repeat herself, see things that aren’t there, lose her way on streets she’s traveled for decades? Maybe it’s not dementia…Because even though the list of other possibilities is long, so are the odds against restoring a patient to normal functioning. When it looks like dementia, sadly, most of the time it is."
  • An October 19, 2014 Chicago Tribune article (via MSN News) profiled one neuropsychologist's battle against Alzheimer's in the African-American community. According to the article, "Lisa Barnes is determined to untangle the risk factors and health disparities that lead to the high incidence of Alzheimer's disease in African-Americans…To her fellow scientists and researchers, Barnes, 47, is a "cognitive neuropsychologist" — a professor of neurological sciences and behavioral sciences at Rush University Medical Center, in Chicago, to be exact. From her office in the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center, she oversees a trio of research efforts on minority aging, on Alzheimer's and on disparities in HIV and aging, with a focus on the brain's ability to know, remember, reason and understand as it ages. To Chicago's African-American community, she is the professor who has been showing up at community gatherings and churches around the city for 10 years, talking about such age-related issues and urging members to help her battle the disease by becoming involved in studies."
Business and economics 
  • An October 22, 2014 Denver Post article reported on the economic toll of Alzheimer's on the business community. According to the article, "The impact on individuals is catastrophic, causing anger and grief over lost careers, among all the other losses, Mitchell said. And it's not just those with the disease, but those caring for them. The cumulative effect of these disrupted lives will rock the workplace and economy because, by 2013, the state's Alzheimer's patients had 229,000 caregivers, the association reports. As a group, they worked 261 million unpaid hours. That unpaid care was worth $3.2 billion. The sacrifices don't end there. Among the caregivers of Alzheimer's patients nationwide, 75 percent also were juggling employment responsibilities. In a 2011 survey, more than 65 percent reported having to go in late, leave early or take extra time off. About 13 percent had to switch to part time or take a less demanding job. Ten percent had to quit. For 8 percent, job performance declined to the point of possible dismissal."
Research, science, and technology 
  • An October 21, 2014 Washington Post article reported that "Researchers at the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities said experiments with Alzheimer’s-susceptible mice found that subjects that consumed walnuts showed significant improvement in their learning skills and memory compared with mice without them in their diet."