Extract:
Studying Alzheimer’s
Years of research have proven that Alzheimer’s disease, along with other types of dementia, elevates the risk of dying early in the majority of patients. In a recent study performed by the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge, scientists set out to determine exactly how long people were likely to survive following the onset of dementia.
Currently, approximately 24 million people throughout the world suffer from the memory loss and orientation confusion that comes with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. That number appears to double every 20 years, and experts predict that by the year 2040, there will be 81 million people living with some level of the condition. The more researchers and doctors can learn about what causes the problem, as well as how to treat it, the better prepared they will be to handle these millions of future patients.
To determine how people’s life spans are affected by this medical condition, the scientists studied 13,000 seniors for a period of 14 years. During that time, 438 people developed dementia, the vast majority of whom died. The factors of age, disability, and gender were analyzed to see how they affected longevity as well.
Conclusions from the study showed that women tended to live slightly longer than men, averaging 4.6 years from the onset of dementia, as opposed to 4.1 years for men. The patients who were already weak or frail at the onset of the dementia died first, regardless of age. Marital status, living environment, and degree of mental decline, although relevant factors, were not shown to be influential.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge hope that this new information will help patients, clinicians, care providers, service providers, policy makers, and others who deal with dementia. The more they know, the better they will be able to respond to this heartbreaking condition.
What is the meaning of the word onset as used in the first paragraph?
-
A
Cure rate
-
B
Incubation period
-
C
Remainder
-
D
Commencement
In the medical context describing disease progression, onset means commencement, the initial appearance or beginning of dementia symptoms.
A) Cure rate
Cure rate concerns treatment success, unrelated to disease beginning. Dementia currently lacks cure, making this conceptually mismatched.
B) Incubation period
Incubation period refers to time between exposure and symptom appearance, inapplicable to neurodegenerative diseases like dementia that lack infectious etiology and clear exposure events.
C) Remainder
Remainder means what's left after subtraction, unrelated to disease initiation. Onset concerns beginning, not residual state.
D) Commencement
Commencement precisely captures onset's meaning in medical contexts: the point when dementia symptoms first become clinically apparent. The passage discusses survival duration "from the onset of dementia" and factors affecting longevity "at the onset", consistently using onset to mark disease beginning.
Conclusion
Contextual analysis reveals onset operates as temporal marker for disease initiation. Only "commencement" captures this connotation of initial symptom appearance that establishes the baseline for measuring subsequent survival duration.