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Alzheimers Disease Research
The number of Australians with dementia, of which Alzheimers
Disease is the most common form, has passed 200,000, or 1%
of the population
The economic cost to the Australian community is in excess of
$7 billion annually.
Alzheimers Disease is named for Dr Alois Alzheimer, a German physician. In 1906,
while conducting an autopsy of a woman who had died after what appeared to be a
mental illness, he observed tangles of brain fibre surrounded by dense deposits
(plaques). These tangles and plaques are now recognised as the hallmarks of the
disease.
Professor Colin Masters, who heads the Alzheimers Disease research team of
scientists from the Mental Health Research Institute and University of Melbourne,
was the first person to discover that overexpression of a brain protein, amyloid Beta
A4 (A-beta protein), is the cause of the disease. This protein is toxic to nerve cells and
forms plaques in the brain that interfere with normal brain function.
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Australian Statistics of Alzheimers disease.
In 2008, there were 227,300 people with dementia, with the number expected to be
731,000 by 2050 unless there is a medical breakthrough.
Dementia can affect younger people; currently over 9,600 Australians under the age
of 65 have younger onset dementia.
Between 2000 and 2050, the number of people with dementia in Australia is expected
to increase by 327%, while the total population increases by less than 40%.
Currently some 12.4% of Australians with dementia around one in 8 do not speak
English at home, ranging from 21% in NT to 3.5% in Tasmania. Overall in the period
2001 to 2050 there is projected to be a fall in the proportion of Australians with
dementia speaking English (83.8% to 82.4%) and other European languages (7.6%
to 6.0%), with a greater proportion speaking Asian (6.0% to 8.3%) and Middle Eastern
(1.8% to 2.3%) languages.
There are approx 2100 indigenous people aged 45 and over in the Kimberley region,
WA. Latest research has shown the prevalence of dementia in this group is 12.4%,
compared to a rate of 2.6% in the Australian population nearly five times higher.
The prevalence was higher in males in the general community, the rate is generally
higher among females.
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