alzheimers disease?

kathy_is_a_nurse
#1. January 10th, 2008, at 5:29 AM.

Here are some partial answers:

An Alzheimer’s diagnosis cuts a person’s remaining life expectancy in half.

This is from a study of 521 people with newly diagnosed Alzheimer disease. They found that the median survival period was 4.2 years for men and 5.7 years for women, about half what a person of the same age who did not have the disease would be expected to live.

It is the most common cause of dementia and affects 4.5 million Americans. However, according to the study, there has been no firm estimate of just how long an Alzheimer’s patient has to live.

Dr. Eric Larson and colleagues at the University of Washington followed 521 men and women over 60 who had been recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Those diagnosed in their 70s lived longer than those diagnosed at age 85 or older, said Larson, director of the Center for Health Studies at the Group Health Cooperative in Seattle and a former medical director of the University of Washington Medical Center.

The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

In a paper published in the September 15, 2004, issue of Cerebral Cortex by Buckner and colleagues examined whether typical aging and Alzheimer’s disease are on a continuum or distinct. The researchers used MRI to measure the volume of two regions of the brain previously linked with age-associated changes: the corpus callosum, and the medial temporal lobe.

Comparing volume in young adults, older adults without dementia, and individuals with mild dementia of the Alzheimer type, they found clear differences between the effects of normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease. The corpus callosum was smaller in older adults, regardless of whether they had dementia. In contrast, volume reductions in the hippocampus were markedly accelerated and larger in people with Alzheimer’s disease.