How common is Alzheimer's disease?
Alzheimer's disease is, unfortunately, not uncommon. We know that the prevalence rates right around 5 to 7 percent in individuals over the age of 65. However, individuals over the age of 85, it's close to halfthat actually might suffer from this illness. So as I mentioned earlier, advancing age is the biggest risk factor. Now, other very important points are that this illness is growing at a huge rate. In the past we used to cite numbers of about four and a half million Americans being affected by this illness. As of about a month and a half ago, the current numbers are 5.1 million Americans right now being affected by this illness. By the year 25, we guess that it's going to be closer to 16 million individuals. Why? Well, it turns out that we're living longer. As doctors, we've actually managed to do a better job about addressing medical co-morbidity. So we can fix other things better. So people live longer. But also, the baby boomers have gotten older, and as a consequence of that, there's a big increase in individuals who are older, and as a consequence of that, the growth in this illness.
