The number of neurological patients in the Czech Republic is increasing!

Stroke affects approximately 25,000 people in the Czech Republic each year, the same number of people live with multiple sclerosis, and almost 200,000 people have Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. Experts from the Neurology Clinic of the 1st Faculty of Medicine of Charles University and the General Hospital, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, point out that the key to maintaining quality of life is, first and foremost, early diagnosis and rapid initiation of modern treatment.

The incidence of neurodegenerative diseases is increasing at a rate that cannot be explained by the aging of the population alone. Since 1990, the incidence of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias has increased by more than 160 percent, and Parkinson's disease by almost 274 percent. However, when age is taken into account, a fundamental difference emerges. While the increase in Alzheimer's disease remains relatively small, Parkinson's disease has increased by more than 60 percent. Parkinson's disease is thus increasing faster than would correspond to the aging of the population itself. The impact on society is increasingly significant. It is not just the number of patients, but the lost years of life that people do not live to see or that they live with limitations and loss of self-sufficiency. In the Czech Republic today, there are approximately 150 thousand patients with various types of dementia and about 50 thousand with Parkinson's disease, and according to experts, this is just the beginning. Parkinson's disease is most often diagnosed between the ages of 55 and 60, but the first symptoms can appear much earlier, sometimes even around forty. Alzheimer's disease, on the other hand, typically begins after the age of 65 and gradually impairs a person's memory, thinking, and personality.
 Modern medicine brings new possibilities. In addition to levodopa treatment, pump systems or deep brain stimulation are used for Parkinson's disease, including its new adaptive form that responds to the current needs of the brain. In Alzheimer's disease, new drugs are emerging that directly intervene in the nature of the disease and can slow its progression. "For the first time, we will have a treatment available that does not only address the consequences, but targets the mechanism of the disease. It is expected that the first patients could begin treatment in the Czech Republic as early as this year. This places great emphasis on early initiation of treatment in people with the disease at its very beginning," says Prof. MUDr. Robert Jech, Ph.D., Head of the Department of Neurology, 1st Faculty of Medicine, Charles University and General Hospital.

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press release