46 million Americans prone to Alzheimer’s

The forecast is based on a lot of supposition as well as some hard data, but it’s the best estimate of how badly Alzheimer’s will affect the country in the coming years, said Keith Fargo of the Alzheimer’s Association, who was not involved in the research.

For the unusual study, Ron Brookmeyer, a biostatistician at the University of California, Los Angeles and colleagues collected all the data they could find from studies of Alzheimer’s disease.

To calculate who was at risk of Alzheimer’s they used measures including a build-up of a protein in the brain called amyloid, the loss of brain cells, and the loss of memory and skills such as reading and writing.

Close to 50 million Americans could be in the early stages leading to Alzheimer’s disease right now, according to a new forecast.

And 6 million people likely have it now, the team at the University of California Los Angeles calculated.

They used other studies including a look at 1,500 volunteers who live around the Mayo Clinic in 

Minnesota, which included healthy people who have no particular risk of Alzheimer’s. They used studies of people with mild cognitive impairment memory loss that can lead to Alzheimer’s and people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia.

And they looked at actual reports of people who have Alzheimer’s disease now.

Then they made calculations to predict how many people are likely progressing to Alzheimer’s right now, although they may not know it.

But it uses solid data and methods that should at least be a start at predicting the future toll of Alzheimer’s, said Fargo.

An estimated 46.7 million American adults over age 30 are in this hypothetical preclinical stage of 

Alzheimer’s disease and another 2.43 million have mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease, although many will not progress to dementia during their lifetimes,” Brookmeyer and colleagues wrote.

“In 2017, there were 3.65 million cases of clinical Alzheimer’s in the United States,” they wrote in their report, published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Approximately 1.54 million 42 percent of the 3.65 million cases living today have late-stage clinical Alzheimer’s disease who need level of care equivalent to nursing homes,’ they added.

By 2060, they predict, more than 75 million people will have pre-clinical Alzheimer’s disease meaning the disease is developing in their brains but hasn’t caused enough symptoms to be diagnosed.

Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia. There’s no cure for it and no good treatment.

source: nbc news