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Experts are warning that dementia is the greatest health and social crisis of the century as its global financial burden continues to escalate.
The World Alzheimer Report says dementia costs will amount to more than 1% of the world’s gross domestic product this year at $604bn (£388bn).
To put this massive sum into context, if dementia were a country it would be the world’s 18th largest economy. Link to read article

Source: BBC
World Alzheimer Report 2010

Before surgery, Gloria Lucio, 57, who has Alzheimer’s, gets a hug and kiss from her son, Valentin, 18, as her husband, Don Jones, looks on. She is part of a clinical trial at UCLA Medical Center in which holes were drilled in her skull and either an experimental drug or placebo was injected into her brain. Link to view photos

Source: LA Times

Psychological stress in middle age could lead to the development of dementia later in life, especially Alzheimer’s disease, reveals research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Based on data from a study which followed women for 35 years, this is the first research in Sweden to indicate a link between stress and dementia.

The research, published in prestigious scientific journal Brain, is based on a major population study of women from Gothenburg. A representative sample of women were examined for the first time in 1968 when aged between 38 and 60, and then re-examined in 1974, 1980, 1992 and 2000.

A question about psychological stress was included in the 1968, 1974 and 1980 surveys and was answered by 1,415 women. [continue reading…]