Penn Memory Center Co-Director Dr. Jason Karlawish has been appointed by Gov. Tom Wolf to serve on Pennsylvania Long-Term Care Council, Wolf’s office announced Tuesday.
Archives for November 2016
More human-like model of Alzheimer’s better mirrors tangles in the brain
Tangled up brain fibrils made up of a rogue protein known as tau are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) that likely hold the key to treatments, making them of great interest to researchers. Mimicking the formation and spread of these tangles in animal models with greater accuracy allows scientists to better investigate new therapies to stop or slow their spread.
A new animal model developed at Penn Medicine using tau tangles isolated from the brains of Alzheimer’s patients rather than synthetic tau tangles paints a closer picture of the tau pathology in the AD brain, researchers from the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research (CNDR) at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania reported in the print issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine. Seeding normal, wildtype mice with the highly potent Alzheimer’s brain-tau (AD-tau) protein induced damaging tangles in their brains for study, mirroring a more realistic progression of tau tangles seen in AD patients’ brains.
Project Home: Bringing free classical music to the PMC community
Violist Rimbo Wong knows the stereotype — that classical music is for an exclusive audience — but, working with the Penn Memory Center, she hopes to shatter it.
The ArtistYear fellow from the Curtis Institute of Music is spending a year in service to the Philadelphia community with what she calls “Project Home.” She will bring classical music into the homes of Penn Memory Center patients who have Alzheimer’s disease or other types of cognitive impairments.
ArtistYear Fellow Rimbo Wong from Penn Memory Center on Vimeo.
Social worker Alison Lynn added to PMC team
Former Penn Memory Center intern Alison Lynn has joined the team as a full-time social worker.
As assistant director of care programs, Lynn will assist Felicia Greenfield, director of clinical research operations and care programs, in all aspects of psychosocial support including but not limited to patient and caregiver education and counseling, caregiver classes, support groups, Memory Cafés and other PMC programs, and supervision of social work interns.
Lynn will also coordinate The NACC Study, specifically with participant recruitment, scheduling, and assessments.
“I’m delighted that Alison accepted the offer,” Greenfield said. “She possesses keen clinical and excellent coordination skills that make her an ideal fit for this role.”
Ahead of next new Alzheimer’s treatment, looking to history to temper expectations
Joe Freshman is 14 years old and has never known a new Alzheimer’s disease (AD) treatment approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Study leaders hope that he’ll see one before returning from winter break, but one Penn Memory Center researcher cautions that a new FDA-approved drug alone isn’t necessarily “the answer to our prayers.”
Pharmaceutical company Lilly is testing the drug Solanezumab, designed to target amyloid, which physicians and researchers think is at least partially responsible for AD. Results of this study will be released by the end of 2016, and if the results indicate that this drug helps patients, “Alzheimer’s doctors will have a new drug to prescribe and also a new way to talk about the disease,” PMC Co-Director Dr. Jason Karlawish wrote in his latest Forbes column.
Penn Medicine cares for local community through CAREs grant
Penn Medicine, while acting upon its mission to work with the Philadelphia community, provides annual grants to staff, physicians, and medical students to support their community service programs. Past programs have helped students purchase textbooks, receive SAT and college readiness tutoring, and provide outpatient care those people who would not have seen a clinician without the efforts of the Penn Medicine CAREs grant.
Last year, a CAREs grant was awarded to Tigist Hailu’s Typical Day project. Hailu, the Penn Memory Center coordinator for diversity in research and education, used the photo-elicitation project to better understand the daily lives of people with mild cognitive impairment.
Hailu gave 12 participants a point-and-shoot camera and instructed them “to capture their everyday life, things that either frustrated or challenged their memory,” she said. Hailu partnered with photographer Damari McBride, who photographed portraits of the participants to accompany the images taken by the participants themselves.
“The goal,” Hailu said, “is really to use the participant-generated images along with the quotes from interviews, and also the portraits taken by the photographer, to raise awareness about cognitive impairment in our community.”
Through Typical Day, Hailu shared a vivid and important window into the lives of friends, family, and neighbors living with mild cognitive impairment.
A public gallery of Typical Day portraits and stories opened in late September at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine and will be exhibited throughout Philadelphia once it moves beyond Penn’s campus. A more complete and permanent exhibit (with more information) is found online at www.mytypicalday.org.
— By David Ney
Task force, PMC jointly tackle elder abuse
Emily Cardin was suspicious the moment she first learned about “Richard.”
Her mother thought he was “The One.” The wealthy British businessman from Match.com was deeply religious, courteous, and gentlemanly. He also promised that he could care for her, financially, after his trip to Africa. It didn’t sit well with Cardin, who warned her mother that it could be a scam.
Despite Cardin’s warnings, her mother sent more than $60,000 to Richard for his hospital bills. But Richard wasn’t in the hospital, nor was he on vacation. He was nothing more than a character invented by a group of Nigerian scam artists.
AlzForum launches interactive timeline of Alzheimer’s disease
Alzforum, launched in 1996 to foster communication about Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, recently celebrated its 20th anniversary with a new interactive timeline.
The detailed history of Alzheimer’s research stretches back to 1906, when Alois Alzheimer made a public presentation on his patient, Auguste Deter. His findings launched the investigation of a complex disease that has been under scientific scrutiny for more than a century.
The timeline is an interactive map of the twists and turns of Alzheimer’s research. Alzforum highlighted the events and images that remain relevant today. The poster version shows how the research of Alzheimer’s has grown from one single patient’s case to an expansive, multi-national research effort. The timeline includes 271 hallmark events.
To see the online version of the timeline and the poster presentation, please visit: http://www.alzforum.org/timeline
Ethical questions arise when Alzheimer’s patients enter the voting booth
Voting is a an essential right that challenges millions of Americans who have dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
For adults living with Alzheimer’s disease, voting is not a legal issue, since states allow helpers into the voting booth. There is an ethical dilemma at play, however: Can this population of voters understand the decisions they are making? There is also a debate among experts as to whether people with dementia can make the deeply personal decision on their own.
“The civil rights of people with dementia are very much in the hands of other people” — namely their nursing staff or family members who may not have the proper training to help ensure that the person voting is exercising their own opinion, Dr. Jason Karlawish, co-director of the Penn Memory Center and thought leader on ethical issues in Alzheimer’s disease, told www.statnews.com.
Click here to read more about the story of one committed voter and his fight against dementia.
— By David Ney