August 01, 2013
Today's Top Alzheimer's News
The tie between dementia and anemia, the importance of preclinical trials, and Obamacare and long term care (read more).
Must Reads
- A July 31, 2013 Reuters article reported that researchers at the University of California have found that "Among people in their 70s, anemia may flag an increased risk of developing dementia later in life." According to the article, "Researchers following more than 2,500 U.S. adults in their 70s for over a decade found that those who started out with anemia were 65 percent more likely to develop dementia by the end of the study period."
- A July 31, 2013 Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News article highlighted the importance of improving preclinical research to get drugs from the lab to market. According to the article, "Eleven. That’s the meager percentage of compounds entering clinical trials that will eventually be licensed, according to an estimate from Ismail Kola, Ph.D., and John Landis, Ph.D., who were both affiliated with Merck Research Labs when their approximation was published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. Part of the problem is that, by their nature, preclinical studies are often fraught with complications that generate inconsistent results and hence, reproducibility issues…Several groups have voiced concerns over the efficacy of preclinical research in recent years. Indeed, in its investigation, the McGill team identified more than 2,029 citations denoting preclinical guideline documents. Around half of those covered neurological and cerebrovascular diseases. This was not entirely surprising, Dr. Kimmelman says, because some of the earliest initiatives aimed at improving preclinical research began with stroke drug development, and were swiftly endorsed by researchers studying conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis."
- A July 30, 2013 Orange County Register (CA) opinion piece by Joel Hay, professor at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, highlighted the Affordable Care Act's "poor fit for long-term care." According to Hay, "Most Americans have no long-term care insurance. If they end up in a nursing home or need home health care due to stroke, Alzheimer's disease or other long term disabilities, they will have to pay for it out of their pockets…While the odds are against it, let's hope this commission miraculously comes up with useful solutions to this pressing problem. The commission vice chair has already put out a thought-piece with novel market-oriented concepts that might actually work. One promising idea would be to combine an income annuity retirement policy with long-term disability insurance. But no private insurance company is going to risk investing in new long-term coverage policies when Washington can change the rules of the game any time they feel like it."