Alzheimer’s Disease Panel Draws Capacity Crowd
Sue Griffin, Ph.D., center, visits with attendees at a reception following a public forum on Alzheimer’s disease.
| It was standing room only in the auditorium when Jeanne Wei, M.D., Ph.D., executive director of the Reynolds Institute, introduced to the audience Mark Pippenger, M.D., behavioral neurologist in the institute’s Walker Memory Center and associate professor in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Neurology; Denise Compton, Ph.D., a neuropsychologist in the Walker Memory Center, and Sue Griffin, Ph.D., professor and vice chairman for research in the Donald W. Reynolds Department of Geriatrics.
Pippenger gave a brief overview of the history, symptoms and stages of Alzheimer’s disease as well as other less common causes of dementia. Compton described the process of evaluation and the kinds of support and services offered by the Memory Center in the Institute. Griffin explained her early introduction to the disease, her research into its causes, especially neuroinflammation related to it, and the direction of future research into Alzheimer’s.
In 2010, about $12 billion was spent on the care for patients in Arkansas with Alzheimer’s disease, an amount equal to the spending nationwide on all lung cancer care in 2010, Wei said.
Mark Pippenger, M.D., talks to attendees at the reception.
“Dementia now is regarded the same way cancer was 30 years ago,” Wei said. “It used to be that the word ‘cancer’ was the most feared word. We didn’t know what to do with it. Since then, a substantial amount of investment has gone into cancer, and now many forms are curable. We are at the threshold of witnessing the same kind of discovery and therapeutics with Alzheimer’s and its future.”
About $5.4 billion was spent on research into breast cancer from 2000 to 2010; $5.5 billion for heart disease and stroke in that same period; and yet, only $550 million for Alzheimer’s disease research. Alzheimer’s now is the fourth leading cause of death, Griffin said.
“I would like to challenge you,” Griffin said. “Let’s get together. If you want to see where the research is done upstairs, I’ll show you. This is where the people work who are pushing us toward finding better and better treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.”