Alzheimer's disease cases grow quickly as baby boomers reach retirement age

• Six years ago, Jim Brennan was a top cop in the violent crimes unit of the Chicago Police Department.
• Today, he can't handle a gun without hurting himself.
• At 58, he is a point man walking into a nightmare that threatens to ambush an entire generation of baby boomers.
• "It's very unsettling, but the reality is we are diagnosing more and more younger patients with Alzheimer's disease," says Dr. Marwan Sabbagh of the Sun Health Research Institute in Sun City, one of the nation's premier facilities for the study of dementia.
• In Arizona, the number of Alzheimer's sufferers has grown nearly 9 percent in the past four years, to about 85,000 in 2004 from 78,000 in 2000.
• And projections call for as many as 130,000 in the year 2025, in part because of the aging boomers and in part because of more sophisticated techniques for diagnosing the disease.
• A study by the Chicago-based Alzheimer's Association projects the 11 states with the fastest-growing Alzheimer's populations during the next two decades will be in the West.
• Boomers have defined the nation's social, political, economic and cultural trends for decades.
• Now, as the oldest boomers approach their 60s, they are harbingers of a health care trend that is expected to see the number of Alzheimer's sufferers soar from today's 4.5 million to between 11 million and 16 million by 2050.
• Just dealing with today's victims swallows at least $100 billion a year in direct and indirect expenses, according to federal estimates.
• "People need to realize that Alzheimer's isn't always about old-timers," Brennan's wife, Sharon, says.
• After Jim retired in 1999 from the violent crimes unit of the Chicago police force, he was focused on the future.