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Alzheimer’s cuts life expectancy in half

An Alzheimer’s diagnosis cuts a person’s remaining life expectancy in half, according to a report that gives a new estimate of how long patients have to live with the disease.
/ Source: Reuters

An Alzheimer’s diagnosis cuts a person’s remaining life expectancy in half, according to a report Monday that gives a new estimate of how long patients have to live with the disease.

The study of 521 people with newly diagnosed Alzheimer disease found that the median survival period was 4.2 years for men and 5.7 years for women, about half what a person of the same age who did not have the disease would be expected to live.

Alzheimer’s is always fatal and there is no cure, although drugs can reduce the symptoms in some patients for a while. It is the leading cause of dementia and affects 4.5 million Americans.

But there has been no firm estimate of just how long an Alzheimer’s patient has to live.

Useful data for gauging prognosis
Dr. Eric Larson and colleagues at the University of Washington followed 521 men and women over 60 who had been recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Those diagnosed in their 70s lived longer than those diagnosed at age 85 or older, said Larson, director of the Center for Health Studies at the Group Health Cooperative in Seattle and a former medical director of the University of Washington Medical Center.

“This finding moves us toward a more precise vision of the course that Alzheimer’s may take in people with certain clinical characteristics,” Larson said in a statement.

“For doctors, this provides very useful data for gauging the prognosis of an (Alzheimer’s) patient. For patients and their caregivers, as difficult as this may be to hear, it can help in making appropriate plans for the future.”

The study, funded by the National Institute on Aging, is published in Tuesday’s issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.