THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, August 20, 1994              TAG: 9408200221
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                         LENGTH: Short :   33 lines

STUDY: COST OF CARE FOR EACH ALZHEIMER'S PATIENT IS $213,000

Caring for each American diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease today will cost more than $213,000 - on top of other medical expenses - over the remaining few years of their lives.

That's the grim prediction of the first study to nail down the costs of the devastating disease that gradually destroys its victims' brain cells.

The study, published in Thursday's American Journal of Public Health, said Alzheimer's costs the nation $82.7 billion a year in medical expenses, the round-the-clock care patients require and lost productivity. That makes Alzheimer's the nation's third-most expensive disease, after heart disease and cancer, said study co-author Joel Hay, an economist at the University of Southern California. And Medicaid, the nation's health plan for the poor, spent more on Alzheimer's in 1991 - $5.7 billion - than on treating AIDS patients that year - $4.2 billion, Hay said.

Hay nailed down the individual expenses that burden Alzheimer's families. He found that in 1991, caring for a single patient for the usual four years between diagnosis and death cost society $173,932 - on top of any other health problems. Today, medical inflation has pushed that tab to $213,732, Hay said.

KEYWORDS: MEDICAL COST HEALTH CARE COST ALZHEIMER'S AIDS by CNB