Research Paper On Alzheimer's Disease

Estimating Prevalence of Alzheimer’s Disease
We often see or have heard of people who know someone with Alzheimer’s disease or may even be affected with the disease themselves. Alzheimer’s disease is not a peculiar case because it is growing substantially in our population due to the large population of old age individuals. Although it is not a disease that is part of the normal aging process for our human kind, it is often occurring in elderlies. It is a tragic disease that highly affects the wellbeing of an affected individual as well as their family and peers. An affected individual will suffer from memory lost as well as behavioral changes. These behavioral changes can range from mild to severe depending on the severity of the disease.

The age groups included those who were sixty-five to seventy-four, seventy-five to eight-four, and eighty-five and beyond. There was an estimate of 4.5 million individuals affected with Alzheimer’s Disease in the year 2000. Of those 4.5 million people, seven percent of them were from the sixty-five to seventy-four age group, fifty-three percent were from the seventy-five to eight-four age group, and forty percent were from the eighty–five and beyond. The data also showed an estimate of substantial increase in people with Alzheimer’s Disease by 2050. There will be a three-fold increase in the widespread of the disease reaching 13.2 affected people by the year 2050. There is definite uncertainty of these estimates because the estimates were derived from the middle-series US Census Bureau estimates of population

In this particular study, the strengths included the fact that there was a stimulated population prevalence based on a source study incidence. Another strength is the random sampling that provided descriptive evaluations based on cognitive test performance. The examiners were also blinded before performing the cognitive test in order to yield non-biased results. The weaknesses of the study were relevant to the sample size because the sample only accounted for only two ethnic groups, black and whites. It was insensitive to the other portion of the population who were of Hispanic origin or Asian origins. The study was also contained within the neighborhoods of Chicago, Illinois, which didn’t account for the rest of the population outside of Chicago. A single community cannot represent the entire country as a whole. There were also weaknesses in the educational level of the participants because it showed no increase in educational levels in the individuals throughout the fifty