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Epidemiology of Alzheimer's Disease: Lessons from Cardiovascular Studies

By Leonore J. Launer, National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, MD, USA.

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Dementia is the most common form of neurologic disease in the elderly; Alzheimer's disease (AD) comprises approximately 65% of cases. Epidemiologic studies are designed to measure rates of, etiologic factors for, and progression of dementia. Information from epidemiologic studies provides a means to validate etiologic factors investigated in laboratory research, and can also generate hypotheses to be tested under more controlled conditions. Epidemiologic studies over the past 10 years have given us new insights into the characteristics and progression of AD in community dwelling individuals. There is now sufficient data to suggest that AD may start many years before the subject meets clinical criteria for AD. The nature of this long progression, the degree to which endogenous and exogenous factors change with disease progression, and advances in technology will play a role in designing new epidemiologic studies. Objective: Provide specific examples illustrating the lessons we have learned about AD through epidemiologic studies. Discuss how we can apply these lessons to new studies. Results: The characteristics of community dwelling AD cases will be reviewed in the context of identifying phenotypes for future studies. The lessons about reverse causality, selective survival, changing environment, and individual variability will be discussed. Conclusions: Future epidemiologic studies will have to address the issues about AD that we have learned in the past decade.

Citation: NeuroBiology of Aging, Volume 25, Number S2, July 2004, Page 1

View Lenore Launer's presentation.
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