Dementia is a general term for memory loss and other intellectual abilities that interfere with everyday life. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, with 47 million people diagnosed and every 66 seconds a new person is diagnosed. Alzheimer’s disease is a form of progressive dementia which worsens over time. It is the 6th leading cause of death in the US; once diagnosed, people tend to live an average of 8 years post-diagnosis. If caught early, the chance of slowing the process increases. The disease slowly takes away a person’s memory and their mental processing functions. There is currently no cure for this disease.
Bill Gates, a tech mogul who has recently turned his attention toward the disease, claims, “It feels a lot like you’re experiencing a gradual death of the person you knew.”
Gates spent the last year funding Alzheimer’s research with the goal of improving data integration. He believes that with better understanding of the data provided, researchers will be able to work more efficiently toward a treatment. He hopes to fund new ways of looking at the disease with his donation.
There have been over 400 drug trials and tests but none have been effective. Although there are some ways to slow the progression and improve the quality of life, the disease will still be there, slowly eating away at the brain.
“Any type of treatment would be a huge advance from where we are today, but the long-term goal has got to be cure,”Bill Gates told CNN. Gates is personally investing $50 million into the Dementia Discovery Fund, a research organization devoted to finding new approaches for curing dementia by looking at what drives the disease and how it starts. He is also planning to donate an additional $50 million to Alzheimer’s research. He says that this is strictly a personal investment, because of his family history of the disease, and not through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Many doctors agree that catching the disease early will allow for better treatment. Dr. James Hendrix, the head of the Alzheimer’s Association’s Global Science Innovation Team, agrees with Gates’ views on prevention. He says, “If we can catch the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s, then we’re treating a mostly healthy brain, and keeping it mostly healthy. It’s very difficult to repair the damage once it’s done.”
Gates will continue to fund Alzheimer’s research in hopes of finding a cure.
