About Alzheimer's Disease
There is a tremendous unmet need both for a simple, accurate and convenient test to help diagnose Alzheimer's disease and for an effective treatment for the illness.
Alzheimer's disease is an incurable, progressive, terminal brain disease that afflicts mainly the elderly. It is marked by an irreversible decline in mental abilities, including memory and comprehension, and often accompanied by changes in behavior and personality. The course of the illness is typically from 8 to 12 years from the onset of symptoms to death.
The disease has a devastating impact both on patients and on their caregivers, family and friends who must bear the emotional and financial costs of helping care for and cope with a patient who in the later stages of the illness may become incapable of taking care of his or her own needs or even recognizing long-familiar faces.
Alzheimer's disease represents a major public health issue for health care providers and long term care facilities. It is the most common cause of dementia in persons 65 years of age and older and is the fourth leading cause of death among the elderly. It currently afflicts an estimated 4.5 million people in the United States and at least 15 million people worldwide.
There is an urgent need for an effective treatment for the illness, caused in part by the rising health care, institutional and social costs for the treatment and care of Alzheimer's disease sufferers. The Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health released on December 13, 1999 put the direct health care costs for the illness in the United States at almost $18 billion for 1996. In a 1998 statement to the House Appropriations Subcommittee, the Director of the National Institute on Aging, Dr. Richard J. Hodes, estimated that the cost of care to family, caregivers and society in general was as much as $100 billion per year.
These costs are expected to rise sharply as the baby boom generation ages and more people become at risk for the disease. According to Dr. Hodes, the number of Americans aged 65 or over, now some 34 million, is expected to more than double by year 2030. Within this group, the population of persons over the age of 85 is the fastest growing segment. As people live longer, they become more at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
At present, there is no cure for Alzheimer's disease. Currently available treatments such as Aricept® (donepezil HCl), Exelon® (rivastigmine), Razadyne™ (galantamine HBr), Namenda™ (memantine) and Cognex® (tacrine) provide a measure of symptomatic relief for patients with mild to moderate AD. There is no consensus as to the cause of Alzheimer's disease.
There is also a need for a simple, accurate and convenient test to help in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. The Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health, released on December 13, 1999, identified the importance and the need for the early detection and diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. The report described the current approach to Alzheimer's disease diagnosis, clinical examination and the exclusion of other common causes of its symptoms, as time- and labor-intensive, costly and largely dependent on the expertise of the examiner. As a result, the illness is currently underrecognized, especially in primary care settings, where most older patients seek care. The report joined other experts writing in the field in recognizing the need for a better, more reliable method for diagnosing the disease in living patients and in particular, the need of a simple, accurate and convenient test that could detect a biochemical change early in patients with Alzheimer's disease.
The early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease is important to physicians, patients and their families and enables them to make informed and early social, legal and medical decisions about treatment and care. Early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease has become increasingly important with new improvements in drug treatment and care. Even a modest delay in institutionalization can mean substantial social and financial savings. Conversely, any testing procedure that could help to rule out Alzheimer's disease would eliminate the tremendous uncertainty and anxiety patients and their families otherwise face and would allow physicians to focus on the other, often reversible, causes of cognitive changes. Early diagnosis represents a potentially large cost-savings in the form of a reduced number of office visits, lab tests, scans and other procedures required by the traditional methods of diagnosis.
