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.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
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