The world has gone too long without major breakthroughs to cure neurodegenerative conditions

Dear editor, 

It has been over 200 years since the first formal diagnosis of a neurodegenerative condition, and no cure has been discovered for a single one.

There are over 200 known neurodegenerative diseases, some of the most commonly known ones being Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s, and most face similar prognosis. Patients will spend year after year slowly rotting away in their own bodies, losing their ability to walk and change themselves, and eventually even leaving their beds without the assistance of medical professionals. With many of these diseases, the patient will lose their memory slowly as their body withers away.

Patients will live with these diseases for years until eventually the complications associated with them lead to an often painful death.

In some neurodegenerative diseases, onset can occur as young as childhood; however, the most common age of onset is between 30 and 60 years old. It is estimated that 5.8 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s alone according to the CDC and that is one of the hundreds of neurodegenerative diseases.

I ask anybody who can donate to research centers and hospitals to please do so or to just raise awareness for the diseases. The quicker we find a cure it means we can save more peoples’ children or parents or grandparents. The time to act is now 

AJ Overbey,

Seventh grader