INDIANAPOLIS — More than $44 million is going to the Indiana University School of Medicine to research why more people under 55 are being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
According to WISH-TV, the money will come from the National Institutes of Health. The study will include 400 early onset Alzheimer’s patients and study them over the next five years.
Among those with early onset Alzheimer’s is Mary Estrada, who was diagnosed with the disease two years ago at the age of 61.
“[I had] several years of doctors telling me, ‘Oh you’re just getting older. Don’t worry about it. It’s natural aging,” said Estrada.
“[The news] is a shock, but it also motivated me to be the best person I can be for the rest of my life,” said Estrada.
“These are rare forms of Alzheimer’s that are often misdiagnosed and they are quite frequent in the early onset population, so we will have the opportunity to study also the different presentations and phases of Alzheimer’s,” said Dr. Liana Apostolova, a neurologist and neurosurgeon at IU School of Medicine.
Estrada say the research has given her a lot of hope for the future that better treatment, or a cure, could be developed out of this research.
In Indiana, about 110,000 people have Alzheimer’s. Twenty thousand more people may get the disease in the next five years.
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