Plan aims to prevent, treat Alzheimer's

America has declared war on Alzheimer's disease. Medical experts and policy makers gathering in Washington this week hope to formulate a plan to put the degenerative brain disease out of the killing business. So far, the disease has been winning.

More than 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer's, which kills about 83,000 a year. By 2050, 13 to 16 million Americans are projected to have that form of dementia. It affects 1 in 8 Americans over age 65 and there are neither cures nor survivors, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

Last year, Congress passed and President Obama signed the Alzheimer's Project Act, which aims to find better treatments and even prevention by 2025. Some of those attending the conference hope the goal can be moved up to 2020.

Among its aims is more timely diagnosis, better support and training for families, preventing and effectively treating Alzheimer's by 2025, enhancing care quality, increasing public awareness and improving data to track progress.

What's missing from the list of goals, according to an Associated Press story, is details on how to fund the efforts. It notes that modern treatments "only temporarily ease some dementia symptoms and work to find better ones has been frustratingly slow."

In its briefing on the NAPA plan, the association notes that developing new treatments is both expensive and slow — and there are no guarantees an investigational drug will be proven effective. "Therapies to treat the central nervous system can take 15-20 years to develop, longer than any other class of drugs. In recent years, many Alzheimer's drug candidates that were thought to be promising failed during clinical trials, highlighting the need to improve the drug development process by investing in research to understand the basic biology of the disease."

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that yet another medication being tested as a treatment for Alzheimer's failed to meet its study goals.

Medivation Inc. said that the investigational drug dimebon didn't meet either the endpoint for cognition or daily function in its Phase 3 clinical trial, being conducted with Pfizer Inc. It had earlier failed meeting endpoints of cognition and mobility in treating Huntington's disease.