Treating patients with dementia

Alzheimer's disease and other dementias have been getting a lot of press lately. This is relevant to oncologists because as the population ages we will be seeing more patients with dementia, and the issue of "chemobrain" or cognitive change related to cancer treatments, is still a very active area of clinical research. One of the more difficult clinical situations I encounter is how to treat a patient with moderate dementia, so as to address their symptoms and cancer and not hurt their cognition or quality of life. Here are a few of the more interesting stories about dementia that I encountered recently:

Maybe amyloid plaques aren't the right target after all? A discussion of newer drug in development for Alzheimer's disease. I am most intrigued by the "old allergy drug from Russia that recently showed promising results in Alzheimer's victims." The trial results are expected in 2010.
The Baucus Health Bill includes a requirement that Medicare beneficiaries have a "personalized prevention plan" including memory and cognition screening (this will clearly be most helpful when we have treatments that may impact the memory impairment, though).
The NIH recently announced that two researchers have identified two gene variants which have been associated with an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease — the CLU and PICALM genes. They also proposed 13 additional genes which warrant further investigation.