Preventing Alzheimer's Disease

Contributed by: Dennis Fortier, President, Medical Care Corporation
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The March 27 issue of Alzheimer's & Dementia, the journal of the National Alzheimer's Association, is dedicated to the notion of preventing Alzheimer's disease. In a tone-setting editorial (Prevent Alzheimer's disease by 2020: A national strategic goal), authors Zaven S. Khachaturian and Ara S. Khachaturian outline a road map to achieve this important national goal.

While the looming specter of rising dementia prevalence is daunting, it is clear that coordination of resources and well-directed funding could catalyze a more efficient discovery process and accelerate advances in this field. Success will require resources, infrastructure, and central governance of a process that integrates several legacy research efforts currently underway. The author's vision is broad but tangible, comparing the goal of preventing this disease in the next decade to a similarly spectacular scientific feat accomplished by an earlier generation that put a man on the moon with the Apollo Space program.

Overall, it is an article that breeds hope through its comprehensive consideration of both the problem and the solution. Several, more focused perspectives are offered by luminaries in the field with insight on some specific element of this multi-faceted problem. Taken together in the full issue, these perspectives paint a clear and plausible picture of how we can indeed, prevent Alzheimer's disease by 2020.

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