Category Archives: News

3 Million More Americans Should Get Diagnosis, Study Concludes

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Three million Americans living with mild cognitive impairment should be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, a tweak in terminology that could shed light on the condition’s cause and prepare patients for an inevitable decline, according to a new report.

The criteria for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease were revised last year, placing more people in a category called mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, which is often a precursor to Alzheimer’s.

The new criteria detail three stages of Alzheimer’s disease: preclinical (before outward symptoms are visible); mild cognitive impairment (mild memory and thinking changes enough to be noticed but not debilitating); and dementia, or full-on Alzheimer’s disease.

Read all about it HERE

US wants effective Alzheimer’s treatment by 2025

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The Obama administration is developing the first National Alzheimer’s Plan to find better treatments for the disease and offer better day-to-day care for those afflicted.

A newly released draft of the overall goals sets the 2025 deadline, but doesn’t provide details of how to fund the necessary research to meet that target date. Today’s treatments only temporarily ease some dementia symptoms, and work to find better ones has been frustratingly slow.

A committee of Alzheimer’s experts begins a two-day meeting Tuesday to help advise the government on how to finalize the plan.

Read all about it HERE

GPS shoes help Alzheimer’s patients, caretakers

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It’s very common for people who have dementia to wander off on their own.

When that happens, frantic family members have to search for them, and call the police if they can’t find them.

But there’s now another option.

Technology — in the form of shoes that have GPS tracking — is beginning to revolutionize how caretakers keep tabs on their loved ones who sometimes wander.

Joann Johnston, whose husband, Bill Johnston, has Alzheimer’s disease, said the shoes give her peace of mind. “When I lost him, you, you kind of panic,” she said.

“I had been leaving him and going to the bank and say, ‘OK, go in, drink your tea and wait for me, and I will come back.’ And he would do that,” Joann Johnston explained. “(But one time) I spent a little longer in the grocery store and got back maybe 45 minutes later, and I looked in McDonald’s and he wasn’t there. I opened the bathroom door and hollered ‘Bill.’ No answer.”

Read all about it HERE