Fresh hope in Alzheimer's fight

Their brilliance means that cancer, for example, is no longer the "death sentence" that it was 30 or so years ago. Medical advances mean that many cases are successfully treated as a matter of routine. It also explains why "an ageing society" is not just a political concept, but one of the country's greatest, and most urgent, social policy challenges.

The pace of medical breakthroughs means that it is occasionally difficult to separate those developments that are aspirations – and those that will make a fundamental difference to the quality of life enjoyed by sufferers.

It can only be hoped, therefore, that a potential new treatment for Alzheimer's patients falls into the latter category, given both the number of victims and the extent to which their latter years are ruined by this debilitating disease that also causes untold upset and anguish to close relatives.

Of course, it will take time for researchers at Florida State

University to take their initial findings onto the next stage, and determine whether Alzheimer's symptoms could be reversed in just 20 days.

It is important that a sense of perspective is retained; for years, scientists boasted about finding various cures for certain types of cancer before they could turn their hopes into reality.

Yet the work of Florida State University could not be more urgent. Tens of millions of people worldwide are affected by dementia, a condition that can transform able and active people, with brilliant minds, into a shadow of their former self and totally dependent upon the care of loved ones. It also justifies the use of animals, in this case mice, in research; without this, a possible cure for Alzheimer's would still be a distant dream.

This potential cure will, sadly, be too late for many, but it certainly offers hope to all those who are genuinely fearful about what old age will, potentially, mean for them.