Grant Zilka - Alzheimer's Research

Because of the recent rise of Alzheimer’s deaths and the world opening its eyes to the matter, greater research efforts have been put to Alzheimer’s. A reason the disease is so deadly is because in order for a definite diagnosis an autopsy needs to be executed. Alzheimer’s was recently added to a list of 282 causes of death that represent presenile Dementia. The IHC created a list of 72 most common causes of death and Alzheimer’s was added to the list in 1994. This list was created to raise awareness of upcoming diseases that might serve a future problem. They created the list by tallying all death certificates’ causes of death. Alzheimer’s was one of the top growing reasons which is why they added it to the list. (Hoyert and Rosenburg 497-505).

Currently, research is guided towards diagnosing somebody with Alzheimer’s before it’s too late for the patient. Doing this will open up possibilities of either finding something to delay the disease or totally cure it. The reason this is so challenging is because often times a person with Alzheimer’s usually dies of a different cause of death. Before the development of a cure, scientists fought to get Alzheimer’s on the IHC list. The list would allow the research to be funded by the government and the speed of research would be greatly accelerated. To do this the scientists gathered evidence that Alzheimer’s is an increasingly dangerous disease. They represented this by gathering the mortality rates of the patients who had the disease. This was enough evidence to gain the funding (Hoyert and Rosenburg 497-505).

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