On the eve of the year millions of baby boomers begin turning 65, research to combat Alzheimer’s disease has failed to make significant advances and drug trials may not find a winner anytime soon.
“As researchers, it’s been a very frustrating 10 years,” said Samuel Henderson, vice president of research at the Broomfield-based neuroscience company Accera. “The current therapies are not working, and the clinical trials do not look good.”
Henderson echoed the conclusions of other national researchers at a state Capitol news conference noting National Alzheimer’s Month. The gathering with Gov. Bill Ritter was organized by major pharmaceutical manufacturers, but scientists say their labs have little to offer so far despite years of intense focus on the growing Alzheimer’s problem.
“There’s been a lot of disappointment in the drug development end of things,” said Dr. Kerry Hildreth, a University of Colorado Hospital geriatric clinician and researcher not associated with the news conference. “There’s really nothing on the horizon right now that looks very promising.”
Deepening that pessimism is a stark review of the looming numbers:
• Colorado’s Alzheimer’s population is at 72,000, almost enough to fill Invesco Field at Mile High, as Ritter pointed out. The Alzheimer’s Association predicts that by 2025, that number will reach 110,000 as Colorado’s relatively high boomer cohort ages.
• The annual cost of treating and caring for an Alzheimer’s patient averages about $33,000.
• Potential Alzheimer’s costs are one of the great drivers of future health care cost increases, with disease care already costing $172 billion nationwide. That will rise to $1.08 trillion by 2050 unless great research progress is made. A breakthrough treatment delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s by five years would save $447 billion a year.
Ritter and others said those daunting numbers cry out for a recommitment to further research. They said Colorado has already become a significant center of bio-pharmaceutical studies on Alzheimer’s, with nine drugs in development from companies with a significant presence in the state.
Alzheimer’s takes a huge emotional and physical toll on families, Ritter said, but it also has a major impact on state and federal health care budgets. He compared Colorado’s impending bulge of over-65 residents to “the proverbial tennis ball passing through the snake.”
In June, major drugmakers slowed by clinical drug failures for Alzheimer’s treatments pooled data from 4,000 patients in 11 big tests, according to the Coalition Against Major Diseases. They hoped researchers inside and outside the company group could draw on the data to seek new directions.
Alzheimer’s attacks brain functions and eventually leaves many patients unable to care for themselves, or to remember anything about their lives. Though researchers identified it more than 100 years ago, cures or treatments have proved impossible so far in part because the brain is so difficult to study, Hildreth said.
Defining levels of dementia in varying populations is one challenge, she said. Pinpointing brain function is another, unlike other more defined organs.
Researchers are currently more hopeful about studies that seek “intervention” rather than drug treatment. They are also working on finding the biological “markers” for the disease that could warn people before they develop symptoms.
Some early studies, for example, indicate people who exercise more with longer endurance show fewer cases of Alzheimer’s.
If studies like that prove true, and researchers find the connection, they could design behavioral or diet changes that could head off or delay the disease.
Michael Booth: 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com
Studies in search of subjects
Alzheimer’s disease researchers need subjects to find effective treatments. “None of this can get done without people who are willing to participate in studies,” Dr. Kerry Hildreth said. The Alzheimer’s Association sponsors a “trial match” program that helps people with Alzheimer’s or related dementia find studies to join.
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110,000
Projected number of Alzheimer’s patients in Colorado by 2025, up from 72,000 today
$1.08 trillion
Projected annual cost of caring for Alzheimer’s patients in U.S. by 2050, up from today’s $172 billion
