Alzheimer's research is attempting to identify biomarkers

( a threshold that needs to increase )

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Alzheimer's disease is the only major disease without a prevention or cure, and fatalities are on the rise. Yet it is a disease that gets a fraction of federal research dollars when compared to other ailments, said Harry Johns, president and CEO of the national office of the Alzheimer's Association. Johns, who spoke Sunday at a fundraiser for the Alzheimer's Association, Greater Michigan Chapter, said the National Institutes of Health last year awarded billions of dollars in research funding, including $6 billion for cancer, $4 billion for cardiovascular disease and $3 billion for HIV/AIDS. But NIH funds for Alzheimer research reached $428 million -- a threshold that needs to increase, he said. "We've made excellent progress, despite underfunding," said Johns. "But there are still many unknowns. We'll get to the answers. The question is, will we get to the answers soon enough."
More than 5.3 million Americans are succumbing to Alzheimer's, an incurable, degenerative disease. With the aging of baby boomers, the disease is expected to explode to 16 million Americans who slowly lose bodily functions and the ability to recognize loved ones and perform daily tasks. The federal Alzheimer's Study Group, co-chaired by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Sen. Bob Kerrey, released a report in May projecting Alzheimer's-related costs to Medicare and Medicaid alone to reach $20 trillion over the next 40 years. "If we do nothing, this disease is going to bankrupt our health care system," said Stephen Aronson, a clinical professor at the University of Michigan Medical School.
Current Alzheimer's research is attempting to identify biomarkers to help diagnose the disease in individuals before symptoms appear. Aronson is enrolling patients in the third phase of a clinical trial investigating a new drug, Dimebon, at the Mood and Memory Clinic in Ann Arbor, one of several sites across the United States and in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. No data are available on the third stage, but Aronson is hopeful that Dimebon will win approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration within the next few years.
Mary Ellen Geist, a New York broadcast journalist who left her career in 2005 and came home to northern Michigan to help her mother care for her father, has hope for Dimebon and more research for the disease. The burden, she said, isn't just on individuals or the nation's economy.
"Some people think that Alzheimer's Alzehimer's only affects one person," said Geist, who wrote a memoir, "Measure of the Heart." "But it takes a whole family. All of us are suffering from the disease." ...http://www.ocala.com

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