October 29, 2014

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

David Rothkopf calls Alzheimer's a "massive freight train," the UK's attempt to improve dementia diagnosis by paying doctors, and new research links compound in cocoa to memory improvement (read more). 
 

Must reads

  • An October 29, 2014 Foreign Policy excerpt of David Rothkopf's new book "National Insecurity" highlighted the need to adequately address threats like Alzheimer's. According to Rothkopf, "Yet, the United States has no doctrines to guide us in this new era. The Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House is, in the words of one very senior recent official with whom I spoke, "little more than a speech-writing operation." It should be made more substantive. Another top Obama administration official said, "science and technology is treated as a kind of ancillary 'over there' footnote to how we think about national security. But . . . technology makes the world now. It is the world. We have failed to understand how powerful this is and where it's going." That official pointed out that the government expends almost no effort thinking about the future trajectory of technology and what it means economically or to our national security. For one example, "the president announces with great fanfare we're going to spend $100 million on brain science. And the New York Times announces this terrific study...that shows the number of cases of Alzheimer's is going to double along with the costs by 2040. But the juxtaposition of the two -- you know here's the president announcing this piddling amount of money for this very poorly thought out initiative and at the same time we have this massive freight train bearing down on the economy and society, on the well-being of the generation that is going to have to take care of us, etc., etc." There is, clearly, a need for the kind of interdisciplinary conversation that currently does not take place." [Behind paywall - PDF attached]
  • An October 28, 2014 The Guardian opinion piece by Rose George underscored issues with the UK's practice of paying doctors to diagnose dementia. According to George, "Last week it was revealed that doctors are being offered this sum for every early diagnosis of dementia, even though our current diagnostic tools can be as rudimentary as I’ve just described – known as the mini-mental state examination. And even then, if the diagnosis is made, people with dementia are still being tipped into a “care” system that is bewildering, patchy and sometimes nonexistent…That’s the kind of calculation that we should be making, not simply putting a bounty on diagnosis. More money would bring better training of staff such as that thoughtless junior doctor, the thoughtless GP, the thoughtless auxiliary who called a dementia patient “a nasty man”, when it’s the disease that is nasty, not the person. Such endemic thoughtlessness shows that it’s the system that’s broken. It’ll take more than £55 lollipops to fix it."
  • An October 28, 2014 Huffington Post piece by Michael Hodin highlighted the potential of technology to revolutionize aging and health. According to Hodin, "There is reason to be optimistic. Digital technologies are enabling prolonged independence. Pharmaceutical innovation is expanding the reach and affordability of once-unimaginable therapies. Breakthroughs in prevention are opening new doors for a longer, healthier life course. Older entrepreneurs are ushering in a "silver economy" - and they're succeeding far more often - if less spectacularly - than their twenty-something grandchildren in Silicon Valley. Nevertheless, there is one point with which one soundly agrees with Emanuel and that is the impact of Alzheimer's as the health, social and fiscal nightmare of the 21st century -- if a cure is not found. Yet, it is on this more than any other challenge of our "aging society" that the innovation which has brought us to this point will continue in our 21st century to find the Alzheimer's solutions also."
Research, science, and technology
  • An October 28, 2014 Boston Business Journal article reported that the Cure Alzheimer's Fund is celebrating its 10 year anniversary. According to the article, "Work funded by the group, which celebrated its 10th anniversary on Oct. 15, has lead to the identification of 100 genes that have an impact on Alzheimer's. Subsequent research from 2012 to 2014 further cemented the genetic foundation for investigators to develop drug therapies."
  • An October 26, 2014 Washington Post article reported that "a new study suggests that a natural compound found in cocoa, tea and some vegetables can reverse age-related memory loss." According to the article, "But hold that chocolate bar. The researchers also warn that the compound found in cocoa exists only in minuscule amounts in the average chocolate bar compared with the amount used in the study, so gorging on chocolate in the name of health and improving one’s memory could backfire.“It would make a lot of people happy, but it would also make them unhealthy,” Scott A. Small, a professor of neurology and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the Taub Institute at Columbia University Medical Center, said Friday." Also reported on by the New York Times