What are the effects of medication for people with Alzheimer's disease? Does it have any impact on life expectancy? Probably not. It’s hard to say sometimes because we used to think that as soon as we made the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, a person would have like seven years to live. That’s clearly not true. People live a lot longer with it or maybe not. Maybe it’s just that we’re diagnosing it earlier and there’s a longer … there are more years between the time we make the diagnosis and the time they die. Part of it depends on how fast the disease progresses. Since medication really doesn’t slow down the progression, it does seem to slow down the time from when a person would be able to be at home and go to the nursing home but it doesn’t necessarily slow the disease process.
I don't think with or without medication makes a difference. I think it probably depends on if we look at it from an amyloid perspective, the burden of amyloid in the brain. I think it depends on other conditions that the … medical conditions or neuropsychiatric conditions that the person might have. I think it depends on, again, their social support. I think those are probably the things that are most important. I was talking to one of my folks that I think diagnosed … We made the diagnosis, I think, about 10 years ago and he’s done so well on the Alzheimer's medication that I questioned my diagnosis. “You know, you’ve really done well.”
He says, “No, doc.” He says, “I know I got it.” This was a brilliant guy, okay? He continued to do well on the basic testing we were doing but he knew that his thinking wasn’t as good as it was and his wife knew that his thinking wasn’t as good as it was. I don't know how much longer he’s going to live. I mean he’s a pretty healthy guy at 85, 86, something like that. I think we don’t know. I think the hardest part about how long someone’s going to live really has more to do with the sort of complications toward the end whether it’s inability to swallow or recurrent pneumonias or infections, those kinds of things. I think once those start happening, we know that life expectancy is going to be fairly short but up until that time, I think it’s really hard to predict.
