Remembering President Ronald Reagan’s fight against Alzheimer’s Disease, and giving a shout out to the clinical research for new treatments!

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Ronald Reagan, regarded as one of the greatest US Presidents, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (earlier posts on multiple sclerosis, sleep disorder, throat cancer, pancreatic cancer, multiple myeloma and others) at the age of 83 in 1994. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, is an incurable condition which destroys brain cells, leading to memory loss, severe behavior and thinking problems and ultimately death. Alzheimer’s, a disease that gets worse over time, is the seventh-leading cause of death in the US. Almost 6 million people in the US suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.
President Reagan’s diagnosis threw the spotlight back on the research of new treatments and clinical trials for Alzheimer’s. As of 2010, there are almost 300 new treatments of Alzheimer’s being investigated through clinical trials in the US and almost 400 new treatments worldwide. Some of the active clinical trials for alzheimer’s disease are:

To help clinical research, you can do your part by volunteering for any of the active alzheimer clinical trials. You can also search by new treatments such as memantine, dimebon, donepezil, bapineuzumab and bms-708163 or by doctors conducting alzheimer clinical trials.

Several patient advocacy groups including Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s Foundation of America and Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation continue to do commendable work to support research of new treatments as well the patients suffering from this disease.

As we remember President Reagan who passed away in 2004 after fighting Alzheimer’s for 10 years, we continue to put the focus on this yet-incurable disease (earlier post on Alzheimer’s). We hope that the great work of all these groups as well as pharmaceutical companies can provide a breakthrough in curing and finally eradicating Alzheimer’s disease!