Health and Aging

Alzheimer's Disease

Are there any drugs available to treat Alzheimer's?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved four drugs to treat AD. For people with mild or moderate AD, donepezil (Aricept®), rivastigmine (Exelon®), or galantamine (Razadyne®) may help maintain cognitive abilities and help control certain behavioral symptoms for a few months to a few years. Donepezil can be used for severe AD, too. Another drug, memantine (Namenda®), is used to treat moderate to severe AD. However, these drugs don’t stop or reverse AD and appear to help patients only for months to a few years.

HHS releases 2013 Alzheimer’s disease plan update

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today released the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease: 2013 Update, a follow-up to the initial plan released in May 2012. The update reflects our national progress towards accomplishing the goals set a year ago, as well as new and revised action steps.

Blog post - enabling partnerships for Alzheimer's disease drug development

A new blog post reports on a recent NIA scientific meeting on Alzheimer's disease. More than 60 leaders from academia, government, foundations, and industry met in Bethesda to discuss partnerships and how they could lead to drugs for Alzheimer's treatment. Dr. Suzana Petanceska, an NIA Program Director, describes the new opportunities and connections sparked by the meeting: "We hope that these discussions will lead to new collaborations and ultimately new partnerships to accelerate Alzheimer's disease therapy development."

Gene variant linked to higher risk of Alzheimer’s in African Americans

A variant of a gene involved in cholesterol and lipid production is associated with significantly higher risk of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease in African Americans than in non-Hispanic whites of European ancestry, a recent study found. Although preliminary, the findings suggest that the two racial groups may have different genetic risk profiles for the most common form of Alzheimer’s dementia. The research is published in the April 10, 2013, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Memorial Butler lecture features studies in early Alzheimer’s diagnosis

Family, friends, colleagues, and the NIH scientific community celebrated the life of the NIA’s founding director May 8 at the Dr. Robert N. Butler Memorial Lecture. The lecture, part of the prestigious NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series, featured Dr. Ronald C. Petersen, director of the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging and the Mayo Alzheimer’s Research Center, as well as remarks about Dr. Butler by current NIA Director Dr. Richard Hodes. Lecture host NIH Director Dr.

NAPA update: National Alzheimer’s Plan activities underway

The National Alzheimer’s Project Act of 2011 (NAPA) set ambitious goals for research, care, and services for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. The primary research goal is aimed at finding a way “to prevent and effectively treat Alzheimer’s by 2025.”

Suppressing protein may stem Alzheimer’s disease process

Scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health have discovered a potential strategy for developing treatments to stem the disease process in Alzheimer’s disease. It’s based on unclogging removal of toxic debris that accumulates in patients’ brains, by blocking activity of a little-known regulator protein called CD33.

2013 webinar series on Alzheimer’s disease and resources

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Administration for Community Living (ACL) are collaborating to host a webinar series with the goals of 1) improving coordination of federal resources available to assist people with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias and their family caregivers and 2) encouraging awareness of research participation opportunities.

NIH-supported study finds U.S. dementia care costs as high as $215 billion in 2010

The costs of caring for people with dementia in the United States in 2010 were between $159 billion to $215 billion, and those costs could rise dramatically with the increase in the numbers of older people in coming decades, according to estimates by researchers at RAND Corp. and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The researchers found these costs of care comparable to, if not greater than, those for heart disease and cancer.

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