A few things to keep in mind as the National on Institute Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association move toward new guidelines for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s – a condition for which there is no effective treatment.

As the NYTimes story reports:

If the guidelines are adopted in the fall, as expected, some experts predict a two- to threefold increase in the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Many more people would be told they probably are on their way to getting it. The Alzheimer’s Association says 5.3 million Americans now have the disease.

The changes could also help drug companies that are, for the first time, developing new drugs to try to attack the disease earlier. So far, there are no drugs that alter the course of the disease.

Bloomberg/Business Week reports on the stakes for industry:

Lilly researchers say their early use of biomarkers, signals in the blood that show the medicines hit their targets, gives them confidence the late-stage therapies will work. A drug that stops or reduces memory loss may be worth more than $5 billion a year, said Tony Butler, an analyst with Barclays Capital. At the same time, Lilly faces generic competition by 2016 to products with about $10 billion in annual sales, or almost half its revenue last year.

“There’s a lot of pressure to show success,” said Butler, who is based in New York, in a telephone interview. “It’s a very risky area.”

The nonprofit Alzhiemer’s Association is funded in part by drugmakers like Lilly. How, heavily? Only they know. Many patient groups do not disclose how much they get from corporate sponsors.

PHRMA reports that there are 62 potiential AD drugs in pipelines of drug companies large and small.