| Alzheimers cases top 13m by 2050 { August 19 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=3303976http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=3303976
Alzheimer's Cases in U.S. May Top 13 Million by 2050 Tue August 19, 2003 05:15 PM ET NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Unless ways to prevent Alzheimer's disease are discovered, the number of US citizens with the condition will increase nearly three fold in the next half century, new statistics suggests. The estimates are based on data from the 2000 Census, and are reported in the Archives of Neurology by Dr. Denis A. Evans, from Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, and associates.
Specifically, they analyzed Alzheimer's disease data from three neighborhoods in Chicago and then applied the findings to the US population.
In 2000, 4.5 million people in the US had Alzheimer's, the researchers calculate. Given the aging of the US population, this figure will balloon to 13.2 million by 2050 if no inroads are made in preventing or treating the disease.
"These estimates of a substantial increase in Alzheimer's disease prevalence assume that the age-, race-, and education-specific risk of disease will remain constant over the next 50 years," the scientists note.
"The large public health challenge is to make these projections obsolete and irrelevant by discovering routes to the prevention of the illness through better understanding of its underlying biology and by discovery of modifiable risk factors," they add.
SOURCE: Archives of Neurology, August 2003.
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