Honoring Sanders-Brown Center on Aging

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the University of Kentucky's Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, which was established in 1979 and is one of the original 10 National Institutes of Health-funded Alzheimer's disease research centers.

The University of Kentucky Alzheimer's Disease Center, ably led by Director Dr. Linda Van Eldik and her outstanding team of scientists and investigators, supports and facilitates research with a long-term goal of enabling more effective translation of complex scientific discoveries to intervention strategies that improve the lives of patients.

The Sanders-Brown scientists are focused on understanding the mechanisms involved in development and progression of age-related neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and related dementias and stroke, and are seeking new knowledge breakthroughs to combat these diseases of the elderly.

This center also promotes education and outreach, provides clinical and neuropathological diagnoses and care of patients with cognitive impairment, and runs an active clinical trials program to test potential new therapies. These activities are critical because, with the aging of the population worldwide and in this country, age-related cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, are reaching epidemic proportions, requiring a desperate need to identify strategies for effective therapeutic intervention.

According to a recent report, an estimated 5.3 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, and that is in 2015 alone. This includes an estimated 5.1 million people age 65 and older and approximately 200,000 individuals under the age of 65 who have younger-onset Alzheimer's disease. Barring the development of medical breakthroughs, the number will rise to 13.8 million by the year 2050.

Almost half a million people age 65 or older will develop Alzheimer's in the United States this year alone. To put that into perspective, every 67 seconds, someone in the United States develops Alzheimer's. By midcentury, an American will develop the disease every 33 seconds.

Alzheimer's disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and fifth leading cause of death for those age 65 or older. There is an enormous cost and financial impact of this disease.

Alzheimer's is, in fact, the costliest disease to society. Total 2015 payments for caring for those with Alzheimer's and other dementias are estimated at $226 billion. Total payments for health care, long-term care, and hospice for people with Alzheimer's and other dementias are projected to increase to more than $1 trillion in 2050.

So when we talk about reforming Medicare, when we talk about doing the things we need to do to save Medicare and keep our promises to our seniors, we have to recognize the critical importance and the return on investment that that investment in the National Institutes of Health can have.

I say, in the debates about Medicare reform--and these are important debates--let's pay attention to investment in the National Institutes of Health and particularly the underinvestment in the research that goes on in places like the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging.

This can have an enormous impact on our ability to keep Medicare solvent and also improve the lives of so many Americans. So I call on all of my colleagues here to join me in thanking everyone at the University of Kentucky Sanders-Brown Center on Aging for their contributions to continue the fight against Alzheimer's and other diseases of the elderly.

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