Southern California is a hot zone for Alzheimer’s disease, with four local counties already reporting some of the nation’s highest numbers of people diagnosed with the disease and demographic factors suggesting a flood of new patients is coming in future decades, according to a report released Monday, July 17, by the Alzheimer’s Association.
Overall, Los Angeles and Orange counties both rank in the nation’s top 10 based on the sheer number of people with Alzheimer’s and related dementias. That’s to be expected; both counties also are among the nation’s 10 biggest by population.
In all, the report found that 326,300 people in the four-county region that includes Riverside and San Bernardino counties have Alzheimer’s, an incurable, progressive disease that affects cognition and is one of the nation’s leading causes of death. The current Alzheimer’s headcount includes 190,300 people in Los Angeles County, 57,800 in Orange County, 46,000 in Riverside County and 32,200 in San Bernardino County.
But the study also found that the prevalence of Alzheimer’s – a rate based on the percentage of people age 65 and older who are diagnosed with the disease – is far higher than the national average in all four counties, with Los Angeles County at 13.2%, Orange at 11.6%, and both Riverside and San Bernardino counties at 12%. (Nationally, about 10.7% of people 65 or older are diagnosed with the disease.)
Some aging experts said Monday that the report backs what they’ve suspected for some time: that the region, and the state, are likely to suffer disproportionately from the health, economic and social stresses associated with Alzheimer’s.
Still, the first-ever county-level headcount of current Alzheimer’s patients, plus demographics that suggest what the numbers will be in the future, could affect billions of dollars in spending aimed at Alzheimer’s prevention as well as money spent on treatment for Alzheimer’s patients and the assistance for…
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