671. Why Has There Been So Little Progress on Alzheimer’s Disease?

You may have seen the news recently about two new FDA approved blood tests that may detect Alzheimer's disease in the early stages. Early detection is important for any disease, but especially for Alzheimer's, which can take root for 20 years before symptoms develop. These symptoms, as you probably know, include memory loss and other cognitive, physiological, and behavioral issues. The reason I say that You probably know these symptoms is because Alzheimer's affects more than 7 million people in the U.S., most of them over 65.

Age-related memory loss has been seen throughout human history, but the disease was not formally documented until 1906 by the German physician Alois Alzheimer. When Alzheimer autopsied the brain of a woman who had had memory loss and hallucinations, he found that her brain had shrunk and withered with numerous tangles and what he called peculiar deposits. Scientists have been trying to figure out those deposits and tangles ever since. The National Institutes of Health spends around $4 billion a year on Alzheimer's and dementia research.

That's up from around $1 billion a decade ago, and that puts it second only to cancer spending. Which makes sense because the elderly population in the US is big and getting bigger. Much of this Alzheimer's research is centered around one dominant theory of the disease. But what if that theory is flawed? No one's getting better with these drugs.

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