From smoking to diabetes, West Virginians top the worst health lists in areas that set them up for another big health problem as they age - Alzheimer's Disease, the 6th leading cause of death in the country and a rapidly growing problem for U.S. Baby Boomers.
Keith Fargo, the director of scientific programs and outreach at the Alzheimer's Association, visited Charleston on Thursday for a public talk on Alzheimer's research, and sat down with the Gazette-Mail Friday to discuss the future and challenges of trying to cure Alzheimer's in the next decade.
"We've had a lot of successes in terms of increasing research funding, but it's not enough," Fargo said. "Several years ago, the Alzheimer's Association asked researchers what it would take, because as part of the National Alzheimer's Project Act, it was mandated that the federal government develop a national plan to address this, and that 'National Plan' has set several goals, one of which is a research goal - the research goal is to prevent or effectively treat Alzheimer's by 2025. That's only 10 years from now, and medical research takes a long time, so that's an aggressive goal."
To reach the 2025 goal, scientists told the association that Alzheimer's research would need approximately $2 billion in funding per year. That $2 billion goal is comparable to the research funding for other major "killers" in the U.S., like heart disease, but Alzheimer's research's current funding levels pale in comparison at little over $500 million a year, despite the fact that the disease is the 6th leading cause of death in the nation. The Alzheimer's Association gives between $70 and $80 million per year to research in 22 countries.
"More and more people have Alzheimer's in their family; it's actually very common nowadays," Fargo said. "One in nine people over the age of 65 has Alzheimer's, and one in three over the age of 85 have it, and the longer we live, the more people who will develop the disease in their family, and they're curious to know more about it. A lot of people think it's the same thing as dementia, or that all dementia is Alzheimer's or that all it is is dementia, which isn't true - it's a fatal brain disease, and dementia is, unfortunately, part of what you experience along the way to the ultimate end of the disease, which is death."
Alzheimer's disease is a progressive degenerative brain disease that affects 5.4 million Americans. It causes cognitive decline and a loss in the ability to perform routine tasks. It is most common in people 65 and older, though roughly 10 percent of those diagnosed have early-onset Alzheimer's and are in their 30s, 40s or 50s. Age is the biggest factor in determining a person's chance of developing Alzheimer's, but other risk factors include lack of exercise, smoking, diabetes and depression. In West Virginia, 12 percent of seniors are living with Alzheimer's disease, and that number is expected to increase to 22.2 percent over the next decade, according to the Alzheimer's Association.
According to Fargo, the number of Alzheimer's diagnoses is predicted to explode nationally in the next few decades, and is projected to affect roughly 14 million Americans by 2050.
A report from the independent research firm The Lewin Group, commissioned by the Alzheimer's Association, found that Medicare spending to care for people with Alzheimer's and other dementias is projected to increase more than fourfold to $589 billion in 2050, and will account for one of every $3 Medicare will spend in 2050, and nearly all of what is spent on Medicare today.
Fargo oversees the Alzheimer's Association TrialMatch program, which pairs willing participants with compassionate-use drug trials across the country like those at the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute in Morgantown. He also manages the Alzheimer's Association's scientific publications, including "Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association" and "Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures."
Fargo's duties also include managing The International Society to Advance Alzheimer's Research and Treatment (ISTAART), the professional society of the Alzheimer's Association, representing scientists, physicians and other professionals active in dementia research. ISTAART facilitates networking and collaboration among its members in order to increase the rate of progress of Alzheimer's and dementia research, Fargo said, and many promising avenues of research have come from ISTAART researchers and others supported by the association.
"The reason we started the society is because the Alzheimer's Association sees itself as a catalyst," he said. "We're trying to make progress happen faster and on a larger scale, and the way you do that is by getting people together to work together. You don't want scientists working in different silos; you want them talking, and you want them sharing their data ... something that has been huge in Alzheimer's research."
According to Fargo, researchers are constantly in search of subjects, both with the disease and without, to participate in therapeutic and preventive trials. To learn more, visit www.trialmatch.alz.org.
Reach Lydia Nuzum at lydia.nuzum@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5189 or follow @lydianuzum on Twitter.