prevention

Study: 46.7 million Americans have Alzheimer’s Disease brain pathology today, so it’s urgent to prevent or at least delay progression to clinical disease

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– In the Alzheimer’s affect­ed brain, abnor­mal lev­els of the beta-amy­loid pro­tein clump togeth­er to form plaques (seen in brown) that col­lect between neu­rons and dis­rupt cell func­tion. Abnor­mal col­lec­tions of the tau pro­tein accu­mu­late and form tan­gles (seen in blue) with­in neu­rons, harm­ing synap­tic com­mu­ni­ca­tion between nerve cells. Source: NIA

New fore­cast shows 6 mil­lion with Alzheimer’s dis­ease, cog­ni­tive impair­ment; The num­bers will more than dou­ble to 15 mil­lion by 2060 (NIH news):

“Using new method­ol­o­gy, sci­en­tists cal­cu­late that approx­i­mate­ly 6 mil­lion Amer­i­can adults have Alzheimer’s dis­ease or mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, which can some­times be a pre­cur­sor to the dis­ease. The esti­mate, fund­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, also fore­casts that these num­bers will more than dou­ble to 15 mil­lion by 2060, as the pop­u­la­tion ages [Read more…] about Study: 46.7 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have Alzheimer’s Dis­ease brain pathol­o­gy today, so it’s urgent to pre­vent or at least delay pro­gres­sion to clin­i­cal disease

Dr. Peter Whitehouse on Revamping Alzheimer’s Diagnosis, Prevention and Care

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Dr. White­house will dis­cuss why and how we need to revamp Alzheimer’s Diag­no­sis, Pre­ven­tion and Care, at the upcom­ing 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (June 7–14th, 2012), build­ing on this quote he gave to an ABC News sto­ry 2 days ago:

“The field of Alzheimer’s research is get­ting a lit­tle dis­tort­ed. There’s a con­stant need to focus on mag­ic bul­lets and sin­gle mol­e­cules,” White­house told ABC News. “It real­ly requires a pub­lic health focus. The most effec­tive inter­ven­tions are not going to be drugs.”  [Read more…] about Dr. Peter White­house on Revamp­ing Alzheimer’s Diag­no­sis, Pre­ven­tion and Care

Ever heard of the Longevity Dividend? Perhaps Gray is the New Gold

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The Longevi­ty Div­i­dend is a the­o­ry that says we hope to inter­vene sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly to slow the aging process, which will also delay the onset of age-relat­ed dis­eases. Delay­ing aging just sev­en years would slash rates of con­di­tions like can­cer, dia­betes, Alzheimer’s dis­ease and heart dis­ease in half. That’s the longevi­ty part.

The div­i­dend comes from the social, eco­nom­ic, and health bonus­es that would then be avail­able to spend on schools, ener­gy, jobs, infra­struc­ture tril­lions of dol­lars that today we spend on health­care ser­vices. In fact, at the rate we’re going, by the year 2020 one out of every $5 spent in this coun­try will be spent on health­care. Obvi­ous­ly, some­thing has to change.

Enter the Longevi­ty Div­i­dend. The Longevi­ty Div­i­dend does­n’t sug­gest that we live longer; instead, it calls for liv­ing bet­ter. The idea is that if we use sci­ence to increase healthspan, not lifes­pan. In oth­er words, tomor­rows 50-year-old would have the health pro­file of a 43-year-old.

It might sound like sci­ence fic­tion, but, in fact, it’s quite pos­si­ble. We’re already doing it in some ani­mal mod­els using genet­ic and dietary inter­ven­tions, tech­niques relat­ed to what sci­en­tists call “the biol­o­gy of aging.”

Get­ting there in humans, how­ev­er, means embrac­ing an entire­ly new approach to our think­ing about dis­ease and aging, and how we con­duct sci­en­tif­ic research into the two.

Get­ting Sci­en­tists’ Attention 

A group of emi­nent researchers first pro­posed the Longevi­ty Div­i­dend in a 2006 arti­cle pub­lished in The Sci­en­tist. The authors, S. Jay Olshan­sky, PhD, pro­fes­sor of epi­demi­ol­o­gy and bio­sta­t­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois in Chica­go, Daniel P. Per­ry, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Alliance for Aging Research in Wash­ing­ton, DC, Richard A. Miller, MD, PhD, pro­fes­sor of pathol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan in Ann Arbor, and Robert N. But­ler, MD, pres­i­dent and CEO of the Inter­na­tion­al Longevi­ty Cen­ter in New York, intend­ed their essay to be a “gen­er­al state­ment to sci­en­tists about the need for a par­a­digm shift in the way we think about aging and disease.

The researchers also met with U.S. sen­a­tors who served on the Sen­ate com­mit­tee that over­saw the bud­get for the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH). “We told them we believed [Read more…] about Ever heard of the Longevi­ty Div­i­dend? Per­haps Gray is the New Gold

Making Healthy Choices: Primare Care and Prevention

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Hiroshi Komiya­ma, Pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo and Chair­per­son of the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cil on the Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy I am a mem­ber of, just pro­vid­ed coun­cil mem­bers with a brief update of his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the recent World Eco­nom­ic Forum.

Part of the pro­ceed­ings are pub­lic — you may enjoy read­ing this pan­el write-up of the ses­sion Health­care under Stress:

- “Japan has the world’s old­est pop­u­la­tion. Health and longevi­ty cre­ate wealth and, thus, “health begets wealth”. It is doc­u­ment­ed that nations that devel­op a five-year life expectan­cy advan­tage also cre­ate a larg­er GDP. A healthy child­hood and adult­hood con­tribute to a more pro­duc­tive old age. New mar­kets and indus­tries are aris­ing – “sil­ver indus­tries” such as finan­cial ser­vices, health, hous­ing and hos­pi­tal­i­ty geared to senior cit­i­zens. Longevi­ty needs to be linked to health – includ­ing cog­ni­tive health – and lifestyle choic­es play a major role in health.”

- “The pub­lic health focus is shift­ing from infec­tions to car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases. Com­plex new mod­els are nec­es­sary to devel­op bet­ter respons­es and improved health – with the pri­ma­ry empha­sis on “real­ly good pri­ma­ry health­care” and pre­ven­tion – to low­er costs. Pre­ven­tion increas­es the healthy years of a person’s life. The chal­lenge is cre­at­ing the incen­tive for pre­ven­tion: how can peo­ple be encour­aged to make healthy choic­es? Mobi­lized pop­u­la­tions can dri­ve the change. Fin­land has an 80% low­er inci­dence of heart dis­ease than 30 years ago due to such incentives.”

Full write-up: Health­care under Stress

Relat­ed articles:

- The Future of the Aging Soci­ety: Bur­den or Human Capital?

- Update: Glob­al Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Innovation

Neurotechnology Trends, and the Neurosoftware Market

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The Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion (NIO) just announced the top ten emerg­ing areas of neu­ro­science that will “impact the future of treat­ments for brain and ner­vous sys­tem”: Top 10 Neu­ro­science Trends in 2007.

It pro­vides superb food for thought. And some of them will sound famil­iar to read­ers of this blog:

* 6. Nor­mal brain aging gets more atten­tion: More research and devel­op­ment is being focused on think­ing impair­ments that only par­tial­ly lim­it inde­pen­dence and qual­i­ty of life for senior cit­i­zens, adults and school aged chil­dren. Neu­rosoft­ware will pen­e­trate nurs­ing homes and schools, as brain fit­ness soft­ware becomes new first-line treat­ment strategy.
* 8. Pre­ven­tion evi­dence grows: You are what you eat; smok­ing is as bad as we thought; and new stud­ies reveal the effects of envi­ron­men­tal sub­stances on Alzheimer’s dis­ease, Parkin­son’s dis­ease and others.
* 9. Emo­tion­al dis­or­ders research advances:  New research con­tin­ues to link neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis to treat­ment of depres­sion.  A bet­ter under­stand­ing of PTSD should lead to new treat­ment regimes.

Want to read prob­a­bly the best overview of the neurosoftware/ brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket? Check this arti­cle, fresh from the oven: Thank Boomers for Buff­ing Up Brain Mar­ket.

To clar­i­fy the num­bers men­tioned: we project $225m in the US alone (grow­ing from $70m in 2003), bro­ken-down as fol­lows: $80m for the Con­sumer seg­ment, $60m in K12 Edu­ca­tion, $50m in Clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions, and $35m in the Cor­po­rate seg­ment. The Con­sumer seg­ment, with a healthy aging val­ue propo­si­tion, is the most recent one but the most rapid­ly growing.