Interesting: Alzheimer's Association Annual Report

On March 20, the Alzheimer’s Association released its annual Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures report.  (The pdf is here.)  It makes some important points.  Here are a few:

• Approximately 484,000 Americans will develop dementia from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) this year.
  

• While hopes for a drug cure arise regularly, these hopes have been dashed when drug trials fail to reverse, stop, or even slow the progress of the disease.
  

• The lifetime cost for caring for someone with AD is estimated to be about $341,840.  The cost of AD to the nation in 2018 is estimated to be $277 billion, but it will likely rise to $1.1 trillion by 2050.
  

• AD is a deadly disease, and it is the fifth leading cause of death for Americans 65 years of age and older.   (I like to say that most of us know a cancer survivor, but none of us knows an AD survivor.)
  

The report discussed a new distinction between "Alzheimer's disease" and "Alzheimer's dementia."  Historically, someone has been said to have Alzheimer's disease after they were clearly in a state of dementia.  But the disease had actually begun years, perhaps decades before.  Now the medical community will refer to the actual disease as "Alzheimer's disease" regardless of how advanced the symptoms are.  The term "Alzheimer's dementia" will refer to dementia caused by the disease -- what we used to call Alzheimer's disease.