Dementia, the Fearful Disease in an Aged Society

(The Quill) — Despite the growing tendency of dementia patients, no treatment has been found to this day.

The ages of 75 and up are more prone to dementia, and the incidence is above 12%. However, it is noteworthy that Amyloid beta, a protein that causes dementia, is documented to initiate 15 to 20 years before symptoms develop, the study found.

 “We can now do a specialized PET scan to show if there is amyloid protein, which is the key to causing Alzheimer’s disease accumulation in the brain. Detecting the build-up of this protein may allow a person to start on an antibody drug that could stop the progression to clinical dementia." Henry Brodaty, of the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing, at the University of New South Wales said in The Guardian Labs. 

Alzheimer's disease, the most common 

type of dementia

The number of dementia patients in 2024 is about 1 million, showing an exponential graph that increases by about 50,000 annually. A host of dementia patients contract Alzheimer's dementia, which accounts for 50-80% of all dementia, a new study finds.

Dementia, which seemed to be incurable, is being expected to make progress nowadays. Since then, lecanemab, an Alzheimer's treatment jointly developed by Ezai in Japan and Biogen in the United States, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A clinical trial of 1,795 Alzheimer's patients found that 25% of  those who took the course were healthier than those who did not, researchers said.

Development of Alzheimer's drugs is also active in South Korea. Competition for development through copious mechanisms such as stem cell therapy and peptide drugs is actively taking place. 

The Bio Association advised that "The future treatment for Alzheimer's disease should point to the concept of clear cause 'treatment' – not 'relaxation'."

This is opening the way for hope of treating senile dementia, a representative refractory disease.