Although there have been warnings that it was coming for years, the Alzheimer's epidemic is here now and millions more families will be touched by this progressive - and ultimately fatal - disease unless its course can be altered.
I can't say when we will have a cure, but we now know through our findings how to ask the question of what is going wrong at the earliest stage of Alzheimer's.
I became demented overnight. Sudden onset is one factor that distinguishes my form of dementia from the more common form associated with Alzheimer's disease.
It may act as an ancillary factor, but by itself, the mutation in tau doesn't give you Alzheimer's disease. This is not to say the tau is not very important. It may be important in propagating the disorder from one cell to another. But as a causal mechanism, the evidence is strongest for beta amyloid abnormalities.
When I was a medical student in the 1950s, we practically never spoke about Alzheimer's disease. And why is that so? And that is because people didn't live long enough to have Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's is a devastating disease. It was painful for me and my family to watch my grandfather deteriorate. We must find a cure for this horrible disease.
Inflammation is the cornerstone of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis - all of the neurodegenerative diseases are really predicated on inflammation.
Alzheimer's is a disease for which there is no effective treatment whatsoever. To be clear, there is no pharmaceutical agent, no magic pill that a doctor can prescribe that will have any significant effect on the progressive downhill course of this disease.
