Miracle Drug? We Will Soon See.
This past Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health announced that they may have a cure for Alzheimer’s disease that would attack the disease before it appears.In order to prevent this disease, they needed to find a large group of people who at high risk and study them for an extended period of time.
As the prevention was announced, they also announced that most participants will come from the world’s largest family to experience Alzheimer’s. The family hails from Medelilin, Columbia, is an extended family of 5,000 people in remote mountain villages outside that city. Family members with a specific genetic mutation begin showing some impairment around age 45, and are in full dementia around age 51,which means they are debilitated in their prime working years as their memories fade and the disease quickly assaults their ability to move, eat, speak and communicate.
This study cold shed some hope on the 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s, and the numbers are expected to swell as the baby boom generation ages. All eyes will be on Columbia, as the drug being used, supposedly has very few side effects.
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