At the Women's Health 2011: 19th Annual Conference plenary session, A Wake Up Call to Clinicians: Alzheimer's and Early Diagnosis, Geoffrey Beene Foundation President, Meryl Comer announced the Society for Women's Health Research's (SWHR) upcoming one-day Alzheimer's roundtable, exploring sex differences in this increasingly prevalent disease.
Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia and is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. Two-thirds of individuals over 65 who have Alzheimer's are women (3.3 million).
The SWHR roundtable will bring together scientists and clinicians discussing the state-of-the-science in sex differences in Alzheimer's disease and best practices in clinical care. The roundtable will be held in Washington, DC in September 2011.
The goal of the invitation-only roundtable is to examine Alzheimer's disease from a translational research perspective, with a focus on where the burden of disease falls, what sex differences have been found, and what crucial scientific questions remain to be answered.
"With the aging population ever increasing, this roundtable could not come at a more vital time," said Phyllis Greenberger, President and CEO of SWHR. "Alzheimer's disease will affect millions and millions of Americans, mostly aging women. While the roundtable will go in depth into the state of the disease, we also want to shed light on the caregiver's role in Alzheimer's, one mostly occupied by women."
SWHR thanks the Geoffrey Beene Foundation, Janssen, Pfizer Inc, and Genentech, Inc. for funding the Alzheimer's roundtable.
Alzheimer's disease found to have five distinct subtypes