Every three seconds someone around the globe develops some form of dementia – the seventh leading cause of death worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
And over 50 million people are currently suffering from dementia – a number that will exceed 100 million in the next twenty years.
This is what Constantinos Lyketsos, the Professor heading the Alzheimer’s Disease Research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, told Phileleftheros in an interview.
Greece-born Lyketsos is also the founding director of the Richman Family Precision Medicine Center of Excellence in Alzheimer’s Disease, and an associate director of the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
He also said that Alzheimer’s disease is not a single one – as most people think. It has more than ten different forms, actually.
“The fact that we do not yet have a cure is because we treat it as an entity and we have the same cure for everyone, while the needs of each person who suffers from it are different,” he also said.
In the future, when we have the appropriate means “medical precision” methods may have to be applied, where each patient will have individualized care and treatment,” he added.
The basic idea is that the right treatment is given to the right patient, at the right time – something that will help them deal with such a difficult and complex disease more effectively.
The cure for the disease at the moment does not exist nor does it appear on the horizon – at least not for the next fifteen years, he said.
