On the Road to 2025: The Global Dementia Deadline

Abstract

With the increasing life expectancy of the global population age-associated diseases stand to become the greatest plague of the 21st century. Indeed, in the U.K. dementia has recently overtaken heart disease as the leading cause of death. While not through a lack of effort, the development of effective therapies for dementias, especially Alzheimer’s disease, the most prevalent form, has been woefully unsuccessful. Policy makers around the globe have settled on a deadline of 2025 for a single effective therapy against Alzheimer’s in order to mitigate the potentially immense cost of the care burden. Although some candidates appear promising, recent high-profile failures showcase the difficult path towards 2025, casting doubt on the possibility for researchers to meet their deadline in the current policy paradigm.