Alzheimer

A federal appeals court yesterday ruled that a district court judge might have erred in granting a new trial to Fair Acres nursing home in a case involving an Upper Darby woman with Alzheimer's disease. The ruling could turn out to be a victory for elderly Alzheimer's patients like Margaret Wagner, a 65-year-old woman refused admission to Delaware County's Fair Acres facility because the nursing home said she had behavioral problems the home could not accommodate. Wagner's husband sued Fair Acres nursing home in 1993, alleging that the home's refusal to admit his wife of 46 years constituted discrimination by a publicly funded county facility.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Jack Rensel was a player on the Philadelphia scene: a key figure in the efforts to keep the baseball Athletics in Philadelphia, co-creator of a theme song for the Philadelphia Phillies, a high-profile advertising executive. He was a vibrant and bustling man. Newspapers of the time frequently alluded to his "hustle. " Then the newspaper articles about Rensel stopped. He dropped out of sight. It turned out he was a victim of Alzheimer's disease. Far from the glare of publicity, Rensel slowly dwindled, his mind and body going until he died in 1987.

The inability to identify the smell of lemons, lilacs and eight other common scents predicts who is most likely to get Alzheimer's disease, according to new research. People who failed to recognize these scents were at higher risk for developing Alzheimer's disease than those with more discriminating noses, the study found. Researchers measured how well people with mild cognitive impairment - memory problems that often precede Alzheimer's - could smell. Those who misidentified more than two of the 10 scents were nearly five times more likely to progress to Alzheimer's than those who did better, said Richard Doty, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Smell and Taste Center.

Alzheimer's disease researchers are trying to gauge the potential of a breakthrough announced Friday: the discovery of an enzyme implicated in the disease. Amgen Inc., a biotechnology company in Thousand Oaks, Calif., announced that the discovery of the beta-secretase enzyme could - perhaps in a decade - lead to drugs that block the enzyme. The company said it was too early to tell whether such drugs would be able to cure or prevent Alzheimer's disease. Almost simultaneously, SmithKline Beecham, a pharmaceutical company with U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia, was expected to announce its finding of the same enzyme at the annual Society of Neuroscience meeting, which started yesterday in Miami Beach, Fla. Scientists are not sure whether the enzyme causes Alzheimer's, so they do not know whether blocking the enzyme would cure the disease.

Chris Eichinger knew something was wrong when her husband backed the car out of the space on Lancaster Avenue without even glancing in the rearview mirror. Instead, he kept his eyes on her. "This isn't safe!" yelled Eichinger, then 48. "You have to watch the road!" Throughout that summer of 1996, Jack Eichinger, then 54, had had trouble finding the Acme in Wayne, a half-mile from the A-frame home where he and Chris had lived for 22 years. Chris decided it was time for Jack to see a doctor.

It may be difficult for some people to believe but for many years, my mother-in-law, Lillie Williams, was my best friend. Now she no longer knows me. Nor - except for brief periods - does she remember any of her relatives, her six children or her husband. She has Alzheimer's disease, a relentless degenerative brain disorder that strips its victims first of their memory, then cognition and finally physical functioning. Researchers announced last week that they have linked the most common form of Alzheimer's to a gene that helps process cholesterol, enabling them to identify some patients virtually certain to develop the disease in their later years.

You live your life, marry, and raise a family. Sylvia was 21, I was 20. Next month, we will have been married 56 years. We have had two miscarriages, one wonderful daughter, and three terrific grandchildren. We had settled into the kind of relationship that people look forward to after all these years of togetherness. Then, wham! At first, we joke about Syl's memory lapses. But her short-term memory gets worse. Also, there are flawed logic, poor judgment, and changes in behavior.

Former President Ronald Reagan is doing "fine" since his diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, although the mind-crippling illness is wrenching for his wife, Nancy Reagan said yesterday. In an interview on CNN's Larry King Weekend, Nancy Reagan wouldn't elaborate on her husband's physical condition. But "there've been better" days, she said. King asked if Alzheimer's is harder on loved ones than patients. "That's true," Nancy Reagan responded. And, reflecting on the joys of her life, she added: "You pay for everything, don't you?"

As I brush my 85-year-old mother's hair before the bedroom mirror, I can't help feeling a shiver of fear. I see her and I see me. I flash ahead: Twenty years from now, will it be me in the mirror in the same position? As a little girl, I would say, "I'm going to be my mommy when I grow up. " Suddenly I'm saying, "I don't want to get like that. " Like thousands of other women, I have a good reason to worry. My mother has Alzheimer's disease, the incurable degenerative disorder that affects the parts of the brain that control memory, language and motor skills.

When the eight children of Rodger Caldwell found out for sure in 1995 that their father had Alzheimer's disease, they convened a family meeting. They agreed they would never put him in a nursing home. And they would share the work of keeping him in the Strawberry Mansion rowhouse he had bought in 1955. Now, Caldwell, a retired union representative, is 74. He can't feed or dress himself or walk alone. He wears Depends. His speech is a mixture of the occasional recognizable word, babble, and odd combinations of vowels and consonants that sound like a personal foreign language.