Covid-19 Issued a Call for Action on Alzheimer’s. Let’s Heed the Message
As we mark the tenth anniversary of the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease, we also mourn the loss of one million lives taken by COVID-19. Confronting both diseases, we realize how far we have come but also how much work is still ahead, a reality Covid-19 has highlighted in the field of Alzheimer’s research.
During the onset of the pandemic, we witnessed the virus tear through live-in care facilities, hitting the aging population especially hard. The vulnerability of America’s senior population has put advancements in Alzheimer’s front and center and impressed the need for a continued national commitment to Alzheimer’s research and treatment.
During the past two years, we have been able to learn more about the after-effects of COVID-19 infections on, not only our body, but also the cognitive impacts the virus has had on our brains. Recent data shows older adults with Alzheimer’s disease died at a faster pace during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic than normal. This disparity was even more prominent in nursing homes, where deaths of Alzheimer’s patients surged to 33% compared to 24% of nursing home patients without Alzheimer’s.
Based on this data, it appears the neurological impact of Alzheimer’s may make patients more susceptible to lingering COVID-19 symptoms, commonly referred to as Long COVID. Long COVID typically presents itself as mental fatigue and foggy memories lasting long after the typical length of the illness. This troubling cognitive after-effect found in some COVID-19 patients appears to produce neuropathological features in aged individuals. The public health implications of COVID-19 further devastating the neural health of the elderly population are significant and require an immediate response from researchers and funding sources.
Alzheimer’s disease is already poised to return as one of the most striking public health crises of our time, lasting long after we will have reduced COVID-19 to a more manageable disease. In 2020, 5.8 million Americans were living with Alzheimer’s and that number is predicted to nearly triple by 2060. This may pale in comparison to the more than 140 million people the CDC estimates that had COVID-19 in the United States, but Alzheimer’s remains one of the leading causes of Medicare and Medicaid spending – and yet receives a fraction of the research funding of other prominent illnesses like cancer and heart disease.
To better understand the impact of COVID-19 on those with Alzheimer’s Disease, scientists are performing ongoing studies using well-established Alzheimer’s disease models to test the impact of experimental SARS-CoV-2 infection on AD-associated neuropathology, helping explain to researchers how the viral infection accelerates disease progression.
This type of translational research helps to better explore new understandings about Alzheimer’s itself. Only through the scientific communities longstanding work in Alzheimer’s, and the recent development of innovative models can we embark upon this critical research into the interactions of these two diseases. Partnerships between virologists, neurobiologists and neurologists are critical to gaining new understanding of how diseases like COVID-19 can impact our most vulnerable populations. This is just one example of the progress we can make with interdisciplinary-focused research and long-term investment in Alzheimer’s disease research.
The global pandemic has had a firm hold on researchers’ attention – justifiably so – for more than two years now, but we must continue to advance science forward on other illnesses that stand to affect humans well beyond COVID-19’s timeline. Few diseases cause as much emotional pain as Alzheimer’s, and the research community must push for additional investment in Alzheimer’s studies while the spotlight still shines on the medical needs of elderly Americans. The more research around the disease progresses, the closer we will be to successfully treating patients and mitigating the tragic impact of the disease.