A New Public Health Paradigm for Alzheimer's Disease Research

Abstract

In industrialized countries Alzheimer's disease is becoming a pandemic. Over the next few decades one in six people are predicted to have Alzheimer's disease. This will evolve into a public health tragedy. Unfortunately there is a problem with dementia research. After more than a century of research we cannot answer basic questions about the disease, whether the biomarkers are truly the disease or whether these biomarkers are symptoms of another yet unknown disease. This paper summarizes the literature to show that there are other correlates—and possible causes—of Alzheimer's disease that have not received attention, but if the disease is approached from a public health perspective, then the disease can be organized under the four potential integrated processes of Trauma, Penumbra, Perfusion and Plasticity. Through this re-framing of the disease as a public health problem an opportunity emerges that can expand and reinvigorate research in Alzheimer's disease. Such new insights can elucidate a better and fuller understanding of the disease and provide some real hope to defining a road map to a cure.