For decades, attempts to treat or slow Alzheimer's disease (AD) — a brain disorder that causes dementia through damage to brain cells and other changes in the brain — have been dispiriting failures. America's aging baby boom population, among other demographic and historical factors, is expected to increase the number of Americans with the disease. Currently, around 55 million people worldwide have the condition — roughly the population of Colombia — while 500,000 new cases are diagnosed in the U.S. each year.
But two new and one potential U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals of drugs might be a sign that the dominant theory of the disease, long disappointing, is panning out at last. The drugs work by removing a substance found in the brains of people with the disease, but it remains to be seen whether this is the answer to AD's devastating and ultimately fatal symptoms of cognitive decline.
