Alzheimer's Century: Funding has stagnated, but the pace of discovery and new treatment strategies have not
By: AARP Bulletin Editors Source: AARP Bulletin Today Date Posted: 2007-06-01
The woman known only as "Mrs. Auguste D." lived in Frankfurt, Germany, married an office clerk and by age 51 was experiencing short-term but progressive memory loss and paranoia. In the city's mental asylum, she came under the care of a young psychiatrist who asked her to write her name. She struggled, wrote "Mrs." and stopped. The doctor urged her to continue, repeating her first and second names several times. She tried again, but couldn't continue. "I have lost myself," she said. She died five years later, by which time the doctor, Alois Alzheimer, had become obsessed with her case. He asked permission to study her brain after her death.
His findings on what he called presenile dementia—and we call Alzheimer's disease—were formally presented in the spring of 1907. A century later, her haunting words—"I have lost myself"—define the disease that affects 13 percent of those over 65, nearly half of those over 80 and half of the nation's nursing home patients. Alzheimer's has devastated the lives of millions of people and their families as they struggle with the many dimensions and ravages of this disease.
But we may have reached a pivotal moment in the effort to better understand, anticipate and control this most fearsome of afflictions. Science appears to be on the verge of a treatment breakthrough, the culmination of three decades of intensified research. Strange, then, that federal research funds have declined in recent years, even though Alzheimer's is now the country's seventh-leading cause of death, and every demographic indicator foretells an ever-growing incidence.
Currently only $643 million, 2 percent of the overall National Institutes of Health budget, is devoted to Alzheimer's—that's $15 million less than four years ago.
What hasn't stagnated is the pace of discovery. Look at the advances: neuroimaging—especially improved ability to identify functional and structural changes in brain regions and circuits; the search for genetic clues; and progress in brain biochemistry and protein processing. They all have led to development of new treatment strategies and raised hope.
In studying slides of Mrs. Auguste D.'s brain, Dr. Alzheimer, a cigar-smoking college professor and neuropathologist, identified microscopic protein growths—beta-amyloid plaque and neurofibrillary tangles—that caused malfunctions in the brain's cells and provided the foundation of our understanding of the disease.
The clinical report on Mrs. Auguste D. ends with Alzheimer's conclusion: "All in all, we have to face a peculiar disease process." That's still the context of efforts to manage the disease, a responsibility and burden undertaken not only by medical professionals but, crucially, by families and friends.
Long-term care is a priority of the Divided We Fail initiative of AARP, the Business Roundtable and the Service Employees International Union. This campaign for financial and health care security focuses on identifying common interests, raising a collective voice and promoting change. We want to hear your experience with health care. Check the www.dividedwefail.org website and share your story.
preview