US President Barack Obama’s administration adopted a landmark strategy to fight Alzheimer’s yesterday, setting the clock ticking toward a deadline of 2025 to finally find effective ways to treat, or stall, the mind-destroying disease.
Starting yesterday, embattled families and caregivers can check a one-stop Web site for information about dementia and where to get help. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is greenlighting some new studies of possible therapies, including a form of insulin that is squirted into the nose.
The world’s top Alzheimer’s scientists gathered this week to decide what other research should take place next in order to meet that ambitious 2025 deadline.
The US’ first National Alzheimer’s Plan comes at what many scientists think is a pivotal moment. Alzheimer’s is poised to become a defining disease of the rapidly aging population.
“There’s a sense of optimism” thanks to some new discoveries, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins told scientists at the Alzheimer’s Research Summit on Monday.
Collins said the NIH would grant US$8 million yesterday to study an insulin nasal spray that could help Alzheimer’s.
Also, the NIH was contributing US$16 million to an international study of whether a treatment targeting amyloid, Alzheimer’s hallmark brain plaque, could prevent the disease.
However, “we need to figure out exactly where is the best window of opportunity” to battle back Alzheimer’s, Collins added.
Already, 5.4 million US citizens have Alzheimer’s or related dementias. Barring a breakthrough, those numbers will rise significantly by 2050 to up to 16 million. Already it is the sixth-leading killer and there is no cure.
Beyond the suffering, it is a budget-busting disease for Medicare, Medicaid and families. Caring for people with dementia will cost the US US$200 billion this year alone and US$1 trillion by 2050.
Sufferers lose the ability to do the simplest activities of daily life and can survive that way for a decade or more. Family members provide most of the care, unpaid, and too often their own health crumbles under the stress.
Alzheimer’s Association estimates. Even that staggering figure does not fully reflect the toll. Sufferers lose the ability to do the simplest activities of daily life and can survive that way for a decade or more. Family members provide most of the care, unpaid, and too often their own health crumbles under the stress.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
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