Is Alzheimer’s the third-leading cause of death?

A major backer of the Alzheimer’s Association is pushing to change the way we categorize Alzheimer’s disease based on a brain study published in Neurology. The research places Alzheimer’s firmly in third place as a leading cause of death in America, instead of its current position of sixth.

Jeffrey Epstein, MD, the founder of the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University and a member of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University, is pushing for more urgency when it comes to Alzheimer’s research. He presented specific details from the published study.

"The study is critical," Epstein asserted in a statement today. "The cause of Alzheimer's is still unknown, and a cure for Alzheimer's must be prioritized."

The Rush University Medical Center study, conducted in Chicago, included 2,566 patients, aged 65 and older, who underwent annual dementia evaluations. After about eight years, 1,090 of those patients died and the average time span from diagnosis until death was four years. About 90 percent of clinical cases of Alzheimer's were verified after death. Death rates spiked for the elderly, with rates of death more than four times higher for people age 75 to 84 who had received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis and three times higher for people who were diagnosed when they were 85 or older.