Are patients with Alzheimer's disease surviving longer in recent years?

We report the survival experience of the incidence cohort of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients in Rochester, Minnesota, whose onset occurred during the years 1960 to 1984. Survival was evaluated relative to year of onset, age at onset, and gender. Survival was better among women than men and improved for those with AD with more recent onset. The relative hazard decreased by a factor of 0.82 for each decade. The effect of age at onset was nonlinear, indicating that the hazard of death does not change at a constant rate with age.