April 14, 2015

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

USA2 SPOTLIGHT

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MUST READS

An April 13, 2015 Fox Business article reported that Gov. Scott Walker signed an agreement with the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases to “increase collaboration between researchers in Germany and at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health to combat Alzheimer's disease and other similar ailments.” According to the article, “The agreement calls for collaborating in a variety of ways, including identifying new methods to improve the care of patients with Alzheimer's, implementing and disseminating best practices for the diagnosis and care of patients with the disease and developing new ways to slow the onset of Alzheimer's and dementia. The new partnership "promises a significantly greater pace of discovery than would otherwise be possible," said Richard Moss, the senior associate dean at the UW School of Medicine. Moss signed the deal on behalf of UW.” Also reported on by Deutsche Welle.

An April 13, 2015 The Guardian opinion piece reported that a new studyfrom the Health Economics Research Center at Oxford University found that “Research funding into stroke and dementia in the UK is still too low despite recent significant rises in state support.” According to the article, “Authors of the study in BMJ Open say the overall sums spent on researching stroke and dementia bear little relation to the conditions’ costs to health and social services, or their economic and personal impacts, despite the Conservative-led coalition’s increasing funding, raising dementia’s political profile and promising more for research in future. The study also suggests the high level of research funding by cancer charities compared with those for other diseases can be partly explained by the public’s preferences, and even a form of ageism – a view that dementia and stroke are inevitably linked with ageing.”
 
An April 7, 2015 National Institute on Aging statement announced that the “NIH  is preparing a budget that for the first time will estimate for Congress the costs of reaching the research goals of the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease to effectively treat or prevent Alzheimer’s and related dementias by 2025.” According to the statement, “Known as a “bypass budget” because of its direct transmission to the President and subsequently to Congress without modification through the normal federal budget process, the purpose of the estimate is to outline funding needs for the most promising research approaches. The NIA, which is leading the effort to develop the bypass budget, expects the document to address funding beginning in fiscal year (FY) 2017.”
 

RESEARCH, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY

An April 13, 2015 CBS San Francisco article reported that “Now, a Los Angeles-based company has created a downloadable program for seniors in assisted care that turns music into medicine.” According to the article, “It’s called SingFit. The iPad app allows people with dementia to sing and record their favorite songs. Its developers say patients who used SingFit just a few times a week showed a noticeable improvement in cognitive function, as well as mood, focus and quality of life.”

An April 13, 2015 Wall Street Journal article reported that IBM announced a partnership with Apple, Johnson & Johnson, and Medtronic Inc. as well as the acquisition of two medical-data software companies “to capitalize on a gathering flood of health-related personal information.” According to the article, “Known as Watson Health, the effort transfers IBM’s experience in data processing to the sensitive field of health care, part of an evolving strategy to pool and analyze data from other companies, such as Twitter Inc. and the Weather Channel. It will attempt to leverage the tech company’s analytics and health-care software businesses into a new generation of apps for patients and providers.”

MINORITY SPOTLIGHT 

An April 13, 2015 The Atlantic article reported on the need to more closely consider environmental and societal conditions for racial-health disparities versus genetic causes. According to the article, “For many years, researchers speculated that what they couldn’t explain about disparities must be the fingerprint of some mysterious genetic component. But since they are now able to scan the entire genome, this speculation appears both lazy and wrong. When it comes to why many black people die earlier than white people in the U.S., Kaufman and his colleagues show we've been looking for answers in the wrong places: We shouldn't be looking in the twists of the double helix, but the grinding inequality of the environment…Even when doctors and policymakers try to address health disparities, and not simply phantom genetic differences, there tends to be too much focus on technology, drugs, and devices. The former surgeon general, David Satcher, and his colleagues say that this is a mistake. What’s needed, they say, is investment in equity and infrastructure.”

FAITH PERSPECTIVES 

A March 20, 2015 The Christian Century article by Samuel Wells, vicar of St. Martin in the Fields in London, highlighted dementia and resurrection. According to Wells, “Dementia is not a living death. It’s an invitation to see how we can remain the same person yet take on new and rather different characteristics. In that sense it’s a training in resurrection, in which we shall be changed but still recognizably ourselves. Like resurrection, we can’t experience it unless we find ways to let go, to let loose, to be released and forgiven. God welcomes us into eternal life not by keeping a tight hold on us but by letting us go. The challenge for us in dementia is to find ways that we can do the same.”