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EMAIL: mazzin@fi.cnr.it
DATA: 23/04/97
Categoria: News

Per chi fosse interessato riporto alcune notizie riprese negli USA. I piu' volenterosi potrebbero tradurre il testo per chi ha meno pratica con l'inglese.

A presto

Paolo Mazzinghi

NEW STUDY SUGGESTS STRONG RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE AND STROKE

- New Studies Address Scope of Alzheimer's Disease -

CHICAGO, March 11, 1997 -- The brain damage caused by strokes may play a
role in determining the onset and severity of
Alzheimer's disease symptoms, according to new research.

"This study provides some hope that treatments and prevention strategies
currently used for stroke and other cerebrovascular
disease, such as atherosclerosis, may prove helpful in treating some people
with Alzheimer's disease," said Zaven
Khachaturian, Ph.D., director of the association's Ronald and Nancy Reagan
Research Institute. "This is very encouraging
news."

According to Khachaturian, previous research pointed to a relationship
between the brain's blood supply and dementia. He
says more research is needed to clarify the relationship between problems
with the blood vessels in the brain and Alzheimer's
disease.

The study, by David Snowdon, Ph.D., of the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at
the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky.,
and colleagues, was presented at "Alzheimer's Disease: Help for the Patient
and the Caregiver," a media briefing held today by
the American Medical Association in New York City.

For "Brain Infarction and the Clinical Expression of Alzheimer's Disease:
Findings from the Nun Study," the researchers
studied 102 college educated women age 67 and older who are participants in
the Nun Study, a multi-year study of aging and
Alzheimer's disease. On autopsy, 61 of the women were found to have brain
lesions characteristic of Alzheimer's disease.
Nearly half of those with Alzheimer's also had one or more areas of brain
damage, known as infarcts, caused by strokes.
Those who had infarcts and Alzheimer lesions had more dementia and did
significantly worse on tests of mental functioning,
than those who did not have infarcts.

The researchers suggest that having these infarcts in certain key areas of
the brain may produce dementia symptoms in those
people made susceptible by the brain cell damage caused by their Alzheimer's
disease.

The goal of the Reagan Institute is to delay the onset of, and eventually
prevent, Alzheimer's disease. Pushing back symptoms
by five years could reduce by 50 percent the number of people with
Alzheimer's, adding years of improved quality of life and
saving this country as much as $50 billion in healthcare dollars, according
to the association.

Two additional research studies from the new issue of the Journal of the
American Medical Association (JAMA) also were
presented at the meeting.

Dementia Often Unrecognized and Untreated

In "Frequency and Characteristics of Silent Dementia Among Elderly
Japanese-American Men: the Honolulu-Asia Aging
Study," G. Webster Ross, M.D., of the Department of Veterans Affairs,
Honolulu, Hawaii, found that, of 191
Japanese-American men with dementia, 21 percent had adult family members who
did not recognize their condition. Of those
whose family did recognize the problem, 53 percent failed to receive any
medical attention.

"As the Baby Boomers near retirement age, more and more of the population
will be at risk for Alzheimer's," said Edward
Truschke, association president and CEO. "The public needs to become aware
of the symptoms and warning signs of diseases
that cause dementia, because some are treatable or reversible, and there is
much that can be done to help manage the disease
for the benefit of both patient and caregiver."

According to Truschke, for those who do have Alzheimer's, early recognition
and diagnosis allows them to participate in
planning for their and their family's futures. Plus, they will be eligible
for new treatments, as they become available.

The association has a free brochure titled "Is It Alzheimer's Disease:
Warning Signs You Should Know." The warning signs
also are posted on the Association's web site at http://www.alz.org.

Predicting the Course of Alzheimer's

Yaakov Stern, Ph.D., of the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center at Columbia
University in New York, and colleagues are
working to address the desire of people with Alzheimer's and their family
members for accurate prognosis about the course of
the disease.

In "Algorithms for Predicting Time to Nursing Home Care and Death in
Individual Patients with Alzheimer's Disease," the
researchers report formulas for calculating, within a certain range, the
amount of time it will take persons with Alzheimer's to
reach two key stages in the disease: need for care equivalent to nursing
home placement and death.

"This is an interesting early study, and may prove a useful tool to guide
future research," said Steven DeKosky, M.D., director
of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh
and vice chair of the association's Medical and
Scientific Advisory Board. "At this point, the formulas are not ready to
help a doctor make accurate predictions for an
individual patient or family."

"People with Alzheimer's and their families look to their doctors for
guidance on understanding and managing the disease over
its entire course. The association supports efforts to provide physicians
the tools they need to properly advise Alzheimer
families," DeKosky said.

The Alzheimer's Association is the only national voluntary health
organization dedicated to conquering Alzheimer's disease
through research and providing support and assistance to those afflicted
with the disease and their caregivers. Having awarded
more than $53 million in research grants, the association is the largest
private funder of Alzheimer research.