HEALTH : Alzheimer Cases Put at 4 Million

Alzheimer’s disease may have afflicted 4 million people in the United States, about twice as many as previously thought, researchers said today.

By the middle of the next century as many as 14 million Americans will probably suffer from the debilitating disease because people are living longer and the elderly segment of the population continues to increase, they said.

The findings, published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Assn., were based on the first survey to include victims of the disease who are being cared for at home, the researchers said. Previous studies have mainly dealt with victims of the disease who are already in nursing homes or other institutions.