Kent Bugg came home from work one day a couple of years ago to learn that his wife, Dorothy Frohder, had abruptly retired from her job as a middle school guidance counselor.
The woman with four degrees realized that she just couldn't do the work anymore. She could no longer use her computer properly. There were other hints of something amiss. She had stopped keeping track of the money she was spending. She couldn't find the words for simple things.
On May 19, 2007, Frohder learned that what her husband had been attributing at times to a thyroid problem, at others to just plain aging, was really Alzheimer's disease. She was only 56 - seemingly too young to be diagnosed with this devastating illness of the very old.
Frohder, who lives in Anne Arundel County, is part of what appears to be a growing number of Americans with early-onset Alzheimer's, as many as 200,000 people in the United States, according to the Alzheimer's Association. Most people who get Alzheimer's are older than 65, with the majority in their 70s and 80s. But a small percentage are being diagnosed in the prime of their lives, when they have jobs and even young children.
"We're seeing more and more people in their 40s and especially in their 50s and early 60s with more serious memory problems than we've seen before. And many of them turn out to be Alzheimer's," said Dr. Constantine G. Lyketsos, chair of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.
He doesn't know why he is seeing more younger patients - it could be because baby boomers are pushing through this age group or there is a greater awareness of the disease. There aren't hard numbers, in part because Alzheimer's is notoriously difficult to identify, particularly in the middle-aged. It is not the first disease that comes to mind for this age group, and doctors often chalk up slips in memory to stress or depression. With Alzheimer's, Lyketsos points out, the brain slowly rots.
Doctors don't fully understand what causes Alzheimer's, early onset or otherwise, or why some people get it and others do not. Some genes have been linked to the disease. One dominant gene is believed to account for up to 10 percent of early-onset Alzheimer's, so if you have that gene, you will get the disease.
More is being learned, but there is no cure. Some medications may alleviate symptoms, but there is nothing to slow or stop progression of the illness, though not for lack of trying. Currently there are more than 100 medications in clinical trials.
