Julia S.: Dementia, the one problem human beings face as they age

Dementia, the one problem human beings face as they age

Congressional Republicans have a new plan to reorganize NIH and it's a doozy. One thing that stands out is replacing the National Institute On Aging with a new institute titled the National Institute on Dementia. Yikes. www.statnews.com/2024/06/18/n...

With sweeping NIH reform on the table, GOP previews new era of research scrutinywww.statnews.com There seems to be broad agreement that change is coming for the NIH. It's just a matter of how much — and which institutes see their fates upturned.

To be Scrupulously Fair, the ball has been being dropped on effective response to the incidence of Alzheimer's ever since the days of Reagan.

research into dementia is incredibly important but so is research into other age-related medical issues NIH is funding a lot of initiatives on dementia right now through the National Institute on Aging; changing the name of the Institute isn’t going to make the work go any faster

I didn't claim the move was productive or smart. Just that there is legit motivation to really draw attention to dementia specifically.

People have been trying things. It's a very hard problem. A lot of effort went into drugs that would break up amyloid tangles, which were progressive with symptoms and thought to be causal. Amazingly good drugs were developed in model systems, they really work on tangles ... but the idea was wrong.

It turns out that breaking up the amyloid didn't help symptoms, maybe even made them worse. An incredible disappointment for the scientists, especially since it was rather amazing this entirely new type of drug had been dreamed up and then realized. Even worse disappointment for patients, families.

More recently some drugs have been approved by the FDA, but that's a pretty horrible story, I recommend Derek Lowe on it. In any case: there genuinely is a lot of work, smart people who care deeply trying very hard. And also money, sometimes doing questionable things. But a lot has been happening!

All of that stuff is true and good. The ball-dropping is on the social services support side: big promises were made in the '80s, and then when the price tag got looked at, they were slow-walked to oblivion.

Don't the Republican politicians get sick and tired of being wrong all the time? That was, of course, rhetorical. They don't.

*phew* I haven't got that, so these other things must be all in my mind. What a relief.

Smh

Well, it’s definitely a problem among the congressional Republicans.

They are going to kill Medicare and Medicaid and therefore stop funding Hospice services and nursing homes. Dementia patients will be - what's the nice word? De-institutionalized.

Post