Dementia and Alzheimer Disease

The gradual and progressive loss of memory and intellectual functioning is the hallmark of dementia.  The most common illness leading to dementia is Alzheimer's disease, named after the physician Alois Alzheimer who identified the disease in 1906.  After the age of sixty five, ten percent of the population may have the disease and the incidence increases to fifty percent at age eighty five.

The decline in short term memory is the most common presentation and family or friends of the patient may be the first to notice the problem.  Problems with word finding, directions and orientation, or attention and abstract reasoning are usually affected next.  Behavioral changes of apathy, paranoia, anger and agitation are frequent accompaniments to the disease.  A five to ten year course from the onset to death is typical.

Current treatments are symptomatic, that is they help with the symptoms but do not cure or substantially slow the disease progress beyond months.  We are conducting some interesting and important scientific studies in this important area of medicine and are looking for participants.  Please consider signing up for a trial and contributing to the discovery of a treatment for this serious disease.