As industrialized societies experience a rapid increase in the size of their aging population, the medical community and pharmaceutical industry are showing heightened interest in diseases prevalent among the elderly. Prevalence is likely to increase fourfold by the middle of the 21 st century. In the US, more than 500,000 have this disease. Over 30,000 people have Huntington s disease and at least 150,000 others have a 50 percent risk of eventually developing the disease.
Stroke is the single leading cause of neurological impairment.
Over 570,000 Americans survive a stroke each year. A total of four million in the US are living with neurological damage that sets in over a period from minutes to weeks after the stroke event. Glaucoma may affect more than 15 million people in North America. Although correlated with increase in intraocular pressure, the progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells and axons marks glaucoma and other ocular ischemias as a neurodegenerative disease. Research has indicated that neurodegeneration may be central to cochlear damage in the elderly.