A neurologist at the Indiana University Health Neuroscience Center says Hoosiers could benefit from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s proposal to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease by 2025.
Dr. Liana Apostolova says increased funding and awareness could help Indiana patients and their families.
“In the state of Indiana alone we have 120,000 cases of Alzheimer’s with 300,000 caregivers, and the expenditures in our state alone are $4.5 billion a year,” she says.
Dr. Apostolova works at the IU Alzheimer’s Disease Center which is developing early screening tests to diagnose the disease before symptoms appear, as well as studying risk factors that could lead to the development of drug therapies.
She says Hoosiers suffering from the disease could play a key role in finding a cure by enrolling in clinical trials designed to find a cure.
Clinton last week announced a plan to increase funding by $2 billion a year during the next 10 years to pay for research and development of diagnoses and treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, one of the top 10 causes of death in the United States.
As the baby boomer generation ages, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sites a report that says the number of people with Alzheimer’s could triple to nearly 14 million by 2050, potentially costing more than $500 billion annually.
