Alzheimer’s disease deserves more federal funding for research

 

According to the latest data from the Alzheimer’s Association, 580,000 people aged 65 and older are already living with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in Florida, and that number is expected to grow to more than 700,000 by 2025.

In his address to Congress on April 28, President Joe Biden proposed the creation of an Advanced Research Projects Agency by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that would “have a singular purpose: to develop breakthroughs to prevent, detect, and treat diseases like Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and cancer.”

 As the most common form of dementia, AD is consistently ranked by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) as the sixth-leading cause of death in this country and the only one of the top 10 causes of death with no means of prevention, effective treatment or cure.

 A study funded by NIH and published last year found that “the actual number of deaths linked to dementia may be about three times greater than what is reported on U.S. death certificates.” Previous studies came to that same that same conclusion … that reported deaths due to AD are severely undercounted.

According to the CDC’s latest mortality data, in 2018, there were 121,499 deaths due to AD. If actual deaths due to AD were even 50% higher, except for last year due to the high number of Covid-19 deaths, AD would already have been listed as the 3rd leading cause of death in the U.S. each year since 2008. Undercounting and underreporting of mortality due to AD may be a major factor contributing to the relative underfunding of AD research by the NIH.

 In 2018, the CDC recorded only 5,044 deaths due to HIV/AIDS, yet the NIH has awarded more research funding for HIV/AIDS, a disease with effective prevention and treatment and so many fewer deaths, than it has for AD in every year since 2008 … and continues to do so again for 2021.

 NIH research funding for AD has been increasing in recent years, but it is still not enough. Between 2000 and 2018, deaths resulting from HIV and heart disease decreased, whereas reported deaths from Alzheimer’s increased 146.2%. AD and other forms of dementia already kill more people than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined.

 I strongly support NIH research funding for heart disease, cancer, HIV/AIDS and for many other diseases. But why isn’t our country funding AD research at a much higher level? AD is already “the most expensive disease, costing more than heart disease and cancer” and it is estimated that over the next 30 years it will cost “nearly $20 trillion (in 2020 dollars) to care for people with AD and other dementias, two-thirds of which will be borne by Medicare and Medicaid.”

According to Alzheimer’s Disease International, “there are currently estimated to be over 50 million people worldwide living with dementia” with that number expected to rise to 152 million by 2050. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 6 million Americans are now living with AD, a number projected to rise to nearly 13 million by 2050. The World Health Organization now refers to dementia as a “global epidemic.”

As President Biden suggested, isn’t it time for the NIH to finally provide the necessary research funding to find how to prevent, detect, and treat AD sooner rather than later?

Allan S. Vann is a former Alzheimer’s spouse caregiver and a member of a $7.5 million task force funded by the National Institutes of Health and National Institute on Aging to improve care for people with dementia in hospital emergency departments.

Published online in the Orlando Sentinel, 5/22/21.