Madrid, (EFE) more are under 65 diagnosed, which already account for 13%.
These are some of the data that experts from the Pasqual Maragall Foundation, the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN), the Spanish Alzheimer’s Confederation (Ceafa), CITA Alzheimer and the Cien Foundation offered this Tuesday at the conference “Current news on scientific research in Alzheimer’s disease and the needs of those affected” held in the Senate.
One million cases in Spain
“Alzheimer’s disease is like the elephant in the room. That huge elephant that is ignored by public officials despite its obvious and uncomfortable size,” began Cristina Maragall, president of the Foundation, which has estimated around one million the cases in Spain.
A figure that could double in two decades, thus collapsing the health and social system, and that can only be avoided “through the advancement of research and science.”
Cost per patient of 32,500 euros
The annual economic cost of each patient is around 32,500 euros on average, but it also has a huge family cost: in the context of a disease that can last up to 20 years, 30% of caregivers are forced to make adjustments in their lives to reconcile, and 12% are even forced to leave their job.
Caregivers who, in their vast majority, are women (76%), as is the case with patients, of whom only 32% are men, stressed Mariló Almagro, president of Ceafa.
Thus, it is not that it is “a great tsunami that is going to hit us”, but that “the water is already above the knee”, because we must not forget the new profile of patients, those under 65 years of age, which represents 13%. “And what will happen to these not-so-old people who are in charge of a dependent person and their child?”, he asked.
New drugs with “very robust results”
However, the experts have opened the door to optimism, so that Pascual Sánchez, scientific director of the CIEN Foundation, has spoken of new drugs that have already given “very robust results” to delay the progress of the disease, to which another “three revolutions” are added to delay the appearance of dependency.
The first is genetics, which “is illuminating the path of these diseases” allowing us to discover their cause; the second, digital markers, which come from Artificial Intelligence, with which the biometric data of patients is remotely monitored to detect the first symptoms “in how they sleep, how they speak or how they move”.
Diagnosis with a blood test
And, above all, the ability to diagnose it with a blood test, which could be a reality in less than five years, and which will make it possible to detect even preclinical Alzheimer’s in patients who have not yet developed symptoms, but who already have the pathology in your brain.
But investment is needed. “It has never happened that when we have given science a problem, it has not solved it”, emphasized Arcadi Navarro, director of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation.
In this sense, Pablo Martínez, CITA Alzheimer’s scientific director, has advocated for a National Alzheimer’s Plan, because the current 2019-2023 “is dead”. “Disappoint yourselves, it is not there, it does not exist, it is a plan that covered a lot and did not cover anything”, and in the end it is the zip code that continues to decide whether a person will have a diagnosis and treatment or not.