Read more: Found here
In The News:
Editor’s note: CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s documentary“The Last Alzheimer’s Patient” streams June 18 on MAX as part of “The Whole Story With Anderson Cooper.”
She would drive to the grocery store in her hometown of San Jose, California, and forget where she parked the car. At home, she couldn’t remember where she had put the groceries. Her husband, Paul, would sometimes find them in the garage.
A lifelong, avid reader, Maida stopped picking up books because she couldn’t remember the last chapter she had read or the major characters.
“I honestly thought I was losing my mind, and the fear of losing my mind was frightening,” she told CNNChief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta for the CNN documentary “ The Last Alzheimer’s Patient .”
Another patient , Mike Carver, 71, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s at age 64 while working as a business executive. Doctors told him to put his affairs in order with little hope for the future. Carver eventually learned that he was a carrier of both copies of the APOE4 gene, which carries the highest-known genetic risk for Alzheimer’s.
“It’s kind of like doing a happy dance,” he said with a laugh. “It was kind of hard saying that part of me was just gone. And so a lot of self-worth has come back.”
The study, published Friday in the European Heart Journal, was small, with only two dozen people receiving treatment and a similar number serving as controls over a short, five-month period. Not everyone showed improvement. Still, for some participants and their families, there were remarkable changes.
