Dad’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s stayed
hidden from everyone until I took over the medical administration of my parents
in 2015. Once I found out, there was a deafening silence from most of the
people I know even though virtually all of them would add, “My _____ had
Alzheimer’s…” But there was little help, little beyond people sadly shaking heads.
Or horror stories. Lots of those. Even the ones who knew about the disease seemed
to have received a gag order from some Central Alzheimer’s Command and did
little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known
reason, I started this part of my blog…
Start today’s blog by following the link
and reading this article…https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/in-1960-about-half-a-million-teens-took-a-test-now-it-could-predict-whether-they-get-alzheimers/2018/09/20/fcbabebe-b864-11e8-a7b5-adaaa5b2a57f_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e218caa362c9
Read it. Fascinating…
The gist of it is
that the largest test ever given to adolescents was done in 1960, when most of
the 500,000 teens were 15 years old.
The data sat
around then for sixty years and no one did much with it until researchers
thought they’d look into how the test correlated to the students, who were now
entering their seventies, to Medicare and Medicaid claims.
They also followed
up with them as many were celebrating 50 years since their high school
graduations, so they were able to gather data much more easily by targeting
their questionnaires at the class reunion venues.
The study found
that about a quarter of them had died since taking the test. They also found numbers
correlating to kidney disease and heart disease. But these newly savvy seniors
wanted to know something that was WAY more important than kidney and heart
health. They wanted to know if the data correlated the possibility of being diagnosed
with Alzheimer’s.
And there WAS a
correlation.
Note:
CORRELATION
does not mean PREDICTION!
Just because you
were a dufus at fifteen, did NOT mean that you were automatically destined to be
an Alzheimer’s victim.
However, there was
a correlation between language use and a few other indicators in that men and
women who had become Alzheimer’s victims had gotten lower scores than their
peers. Researchers then took the stance that if there IS a correlation, maybe
we could use those types of scores to begin a bit of early intervention!
What does this
have to do with us in 2018? Perhaps we could continue the research using
another kind of test given to a large number of teenagers? There would have to
be a massive overhaul of the test. One of the questions asked you to identify the
type of FISHING LURE that was illustrated. We can’t possibly give the same test
today that they gave in 1960.
However, it’s still
possible that we could do this today, perhaps with the ACT.
In the state I
live in, the ACT is given as a matter of course for all juniors (sixteen-going-on-seventeen-year-olds).
The same kind of statistical analysis might be applied to it as well.
In fact, since it’s
inception in 1959, some sixty MILLION ACT tests have been administered (1959 =
75,460; 2017 = 2,030,000; average = approx. 1,010,000 over 58 years). The ACT
is now given in fifteen other countries (one acting as the testing site for ten
other countries) and all fifty US states, the District of Columbia and the
fourteen US territories.
That data would be
interesting to work with. Even MORE data than a measly half-million American
teenagers…
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