With Alzheimer's, Health-Care Costs Could Triple

Experts urge greater investment in research to stem 'crippling' expenses
By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- In a new report, the Alzheimer's Association estimates that Alzheimer's disease and dementia triple the health-care costs for afflicted seniors.
In addition, people who live in nursing homes or assisted living facilities pay an average of $16,689 in out-of-pocket costs each year, researchers found. The association also estimates that nearly 10 million unpaid caregivers of people with Alzheimer's disease spent 8.5 billion hours in 2008 watching over their loved ones, care valued at an estimated $94 billion.

"These health-care costs are crippling, not just to society at large but to families and individuals," said Angela Geiger, chief strategy officer with the Alzheimer's Association, which released the report Tuesday.

About 5.3 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, according to the association's Facts and Figures report for 2009. The number includes about 14 percent of people aged 71 and older.

The report finds that:......read the whole article

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Memantine Benefits Overall and Specific Cognitive Abilities

Doctors Guide
Dispatcch

Memantine Benefits Overall and Specific Cognitive Abilities in Patients With Moderate to Severe Alzheimer's Disease: Presented at ADPD
By Chris Berrie

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- March 15, 2009 -- Memantine demonstrates significant benefits on global cognition as well as on specific single cognitive items in patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease (AD), according to study data presented here at the 9th International Conference on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases (ADPD).

Coinvestigator Patrizia Mecocci, MD, PhD, Institute of Gerontology and Geriatrics, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy, presented this post hoc analysis of combined data from 6 multicentre, randomised trials here on March 14.

This analysis was designed to assess the effects.....read the whole atory

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Be a part of Alzheimer Public Policy Forum Week from home

Alzheimer's Association
Help us get the word out to America by voicing your support during the following media appearances by Association leaders:
Alzheimer's Association President and CEO Harry Johns will appear on C-Span Tuesday, March 24; 8:30 - 9:00 AM, (EST) to introduce the latest frightening statistics from the new Alzheimer's Association 2009 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures Report.
Alzheimer's Study Group members Newt Gingrich, Sandra Day O'Connor, and David Satcher will appear on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation on Wednesday, March 25; 2-3 PM (EST) to discuss the Alzheimer crisis.

Can't attend our Washington, D.C. Candlelight Vigil in person? Then light a virtual candle -- create a moving and lasting online tribute page!

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Cerebrolysin Improves Cognition and Clinical Functioning in Patients With Moderate to Moderate/Severe Vascular Dementia: Presented at ADPD

DG

By Chris Berrie

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Cerebrolysin is safe and improves both cognition and clinical functioning in patients with moderate to moderate/severe vascular dementia, according to trial data presented here at the 9th International Conference on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases (ADPD).

Previous clinical studies have shown that cerebrolysin can have positive clinical effects on patients with Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia.

"We performed this trial because we had some very promising results from preliminary data, and so we moved to a bigger trial with more patients in vascular dementia," stated Edith Doppler, PhD, Research and Development, EBEWE Pharma, Unterach, Austria, presenting the prospective study here on March 14.

The aim was thus to determine the clinical outcome and safety of cerebrolysin treatment as an add-on to standard treatment with acetylsalicylic acid, as compared to placebo.

Subjects included in this multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial were aged 50 to 85 years with a confirmed diagnosis of vascular dementia, baseline Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores between 10 to 24, modified Hachinski Ischaemic score over 4, and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale scores of 15 or less. All women were postmenopausal. Standard exclusion criteria were applied.

Baseline was defined as 6 months of acetylsalicylic acid 100 mg treatment, when the 232 intention-to-treat patients with vascular dementia were randomised to receive add-on placebo (n = 115) or intravenous cerebrolysin 20 mL daily (n = 117) as two 1-month treatment cycles over 6 months, followed by 2-month treatment-free intervals.

The baseline clinical characteristics of the placebo and cerebrolysin groups were similar, including probable vascular dementia (73.9% vs 68.4%, respectively) and possible vascular dementia (26.1% vs 31.6%). Baseline scores on the modified Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-cognitive subscale (ADAS-cog) were also similar (30.2 vs 29.5, respectively), as were the scores on the MMSE (19.4 vs 19.8), the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study-Activities of Daily Living (ADCS-ADL) subscale (52.5 vs 52.4), clock-drawing scores (6.2 vs 6.5); and trail-making scores (160.0 vs 149.9).

With the primary endpoints as changes from baseline, cerebrolysin treatment was significantly more beneficial than placebo at all assessments through to completion at 6 months on the ADAS-cog, (-10.6 vs -4.5; P < .0001 for all). On the Clinician's Interview Based Impression of Change plus caregiver input (CIBIC+), at completion, about 75% of the cerebrolysin group showed clinical improvements, with only about 35% seen for placebo.

The odds ratios for achieving a favourable response (ADAS-cog >4 points; CIBIC+ <4 points, from baseline) were........read the whole article

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Cerebrolysin-Donepezil Combination Superior to Either Drug Alone in the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease: Presented at ADPD

DGDispatch
by Chris Berry
PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Cerebrolysin is safe and well tolerated, and its combination with donepezil shows superiority to either treatment alone, with long-term benefits seen for patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD), according to data presented here at the 9th International Conference on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases (ADPD).

"With cholinesterase inhibitors, you normally get symptomatic improvement of [AD] patients, but you do not stop the........read the whole story

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Blood Test Predicts Dementia

NewsMax.com
Health
By: Sylvia Booth Hubbard Article Font Size

A new test can help predict whether a patient will develop frontal lobe dementia (Frontotemporal Dementia or FTD). Next to Alzheimer’s, FTD is the form of dementia that strikes people most frequently at a relatively young age—younger than 65.

In FTD, large numbers of brain cells begin to die off in the frontal lobe, the foremost part of the brain which comprises about 30 percent of brain mass. The frontal lobe helps regulate behavior, movement, and mood, and is responsible for functions such as language. The first signs of FTD are changes in behavior and personality. In later stages, the victim suffers from memory loss.

Researcher Christine Van Broeckhoven and her colleagues found that a large percentage of people who have FTD have a genetic defect in chromosome 17. Those people produce only half the normal amount of a progranulin protein, and Van Broeckhoven discovered that a shortage of this protein, which is a growth factor, leads to cells dying in the frontal lobe. Additional results indicate that...read the whole article

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Seemingly “Innocent” Transfers and Medicaid

payingforalzheimerscare
Brian Willie

Did you know that even seemingly innocent things like adding a son or daughter as a joint owner on an account can be viewed by Medicaid as a transfer of assets? We talked last time how transfers of assets for less than fair market value can create long periods of ineligibility. Well when most people think of transfers, they only think of the obvious-things like giving a loved one a gift of cash or giving them a car or maybe even transferring stock into their name.

But, even things like........read the whole post

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4 ways to pay for long term care

US News and World Report

Out of your pocket. Medicaid. Other options are long-term care insurance and a reverse mortgage
By Michelle Andrews
Posted March 11, 2009
Who looks forward to living in a nursing home? Few people build the possibility into their financial planning, an understandable lapse but unwise in the long run. Even if they did, the cold fact is that the options available to pay for long-term care, whether it's a nursing home, an assisted living facility, or home care, are limited and too often unaffordable.

Still, it is a harsh reality that about 70 percent of 65-year-olds will need long-term care at some point, according to a study conducted by researchers at Penn State, Georgetown, and the Lewin Group. Of that group, about 30 percent will need it for more than five years. That's extreme—the average long-term stay is about 2½ years. But it's expensive even for short-timers. The average daily rate in 2008 for a semiprivate room was $191 last year, according to MetLife Mature Market Institute's annual survey of nursing homes. Do the math. The sum comes to about $70,000 a year.

Other long-term care options are less onerous but will still wreck many fixed incomes. Assisted living facilities, where people who don't need skilled nursing care can get help with essential but routine chores, are much less expensive, averaging $36,372 annually. For those who can stay put, the services of a home health aide typically cost $20 an hour. Adult day care, another option that can allow someone to continue to live at home with family, costs $64 per day on average, according to MetLife.

Medicare isn't an option for truly long-term care. Coverage of skilled nursing care is limited to 100-day benefit periods and requires at least three days of hospitalization before being admitted to a home. It's fine for someone who's just...
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StoryCorps project shares lives

Green Valley News and Sun
By Ellen Sussman, Special to the Green Valley News

A nationwide project to record and document individual American stories visited Casa de Esperanza.

Three participants from their Adult Day Health Care Center and three residents from La Posada recorded some of their most poignant memories.

In partnership with National Public Radio and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, StoryCorps is an independent, nonprofit initiative.

Created by award-winning documentary producer Dave Isay, StoryCorps is the largest multi-year oral history project ever undertaken. Since 2003, the project has traveled to all 50 states and recorded more than 23,000 individual stories; in 2006,

StoryCorps launched the Memory Loss Initiative to support and encourage people with memory loss to share their stories.

“Looking a loved one in the eyes and asking....read the whole story

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Alzheimer's treatment shows promise

NBC-2.com
LEE COUNTY: There is a promising new treatment in the fight against Alzheimer's disease and the study is happening in Southwest Florida.

Next month, Betty and Ed Mills will celebrate their 61st wedding anniversary.

In all their years together no challenge is bigger than this one: Betty is living with Alzheimer's.

"It's a shock. You're not sick. You feel good," said Betty.

The signs of the disease are there.

"I can't remember what we did two days ago," said Betty.

For someone having lived with Alzheimer's for a decade, Betty is doing well.

She credits.....read the whole article

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Medicaid Transfer of Asset Rules

paying for alzheimers care

Brian Willie

I see it everyday in my practice. A family member comes to see me because their money is quickly running out and they must put their loved one in a nursing home. They want to know how they can qualify for Medicaid to try and preserve at least some of their loved ones’ hard earned income and assets.

But through mis-information over the years, they have gone about things in the wrong way. Two of the biggest mistakes I see are:

1. The person with Alzheimer’s Disease gave away or loaned money to a relative, or a family member listed on a joint account thought that they needed to move the money away from the account to protect it-so they transferred it-either to themselves or someone else.

2. The family member who may have power of attorney provides care for the person with Alzheimer’s for several years in home, and may be compensating themselves out of the bank account of the person with Alzheimer’s.

Both trigger “transfer of asset” problems. What is the transfer of asset rule Medicaid follows? It differs from state to state, but in general this is a rule that Medicaid applies to determine if someone gave another person property or money for less than fair market value. In other words, if there was an actual fair market exchange (i.e. money for services) then Medicaid may not have a problem. But, if someone....... read the whole post

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Supporting people with dementia by listening clearly to their emotions

Lancaster ONLINE.com
By LINDA ESPENSHADE, Staff Writer

In the beginning stages of dementia, the 80-year-old woman who recently moved to a retirement community couldn't understand why her children wouldn't come and take her back home.

They had promised they would, she insisted.

"What's going on?" Stephen Klotz, validation director for Country Meadows Retirement Communities, including a branch in Lancaster asked. "You really seem unhappy here."

"Well, it's not that it's so bad here," the woman said. "It's just not where I should be. I should be at home," she said emphatically.

"You really want to go home because this isn't your home," Klotz said rephrasing what she had said with the same intensity.

"You're darn right this isn't my home," she said.

"What's your home like?" Klotz asked.

"It's mine. My stuff is there. My family lives nearby."
Whar else?.......read the whole article

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