To date, the classical approach of epidemiology has been neither exhaustive nor particularly helpful in developing insights into the nature of Alzheimer's disease. The inability both to diagnose the disease and predict its clinical course hampers our ability to conduct adequate research on cause, prevention, clinical trials, and other treatment modalities as well as to select those key patients for whom greater efforts toward securing autopsies must be made. We are engaged in establishing an Alzheimer's Disease Patient Registry, to determine the data needed to embark on major etiologic and epidemiologic studies. Our studies of Alzheimer's disease in families and in forms of social and financial milieu are designed to develop humanitarian and potentially cost-effective approaches.
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