Sunday, 30 November 2014

A treatable disease that can be mistaken for Alzheimer's

I came across this online.  There's a condition called  Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH) that causes, amongst other things, dementia that can be mistaken for Alzheimer's Disease:

http://www.alz.org/dementia/normal-pressure-hydrocephalus-nph.asp

In some cases the disease is treatable.  Sometimes patients can make an almost complete recovery.

Everyone interested in dementia should be aware of this disease as it is one of the few conditions involving dementia for which there is, sometimes, a 'cure'.  If someone with NPH is diagnosed as having AD, the consequence could be that they miss out on the possibility of successful treatment.

Tuesday, 11 November 2014

An interesting article about ageism....

..which might offer one explanation as to why research into dementia, which primarily affects and kills older people, is so shockingly underfunded as compared with research into cancer, for example:

Article in The Lancet