Latest News

By Kamila Ahmad 

The way researchers measure the possibility of an older adult developing Alzheimer’s disease is changing.  

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine — Edward Lee, assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and Mingyao Li, professor of biostatistics — collaborated to analyze alternative methods of examining brain cells to existing ones.  

Old methods involved grinding up the brain to study the disease, which made it impossible to study the complex cell characteristics unique to each different type of brain cell. “The new technology is that there are ways to look at individual cells, one at a time, to understand what genes are being expressed in those cells,” said Dr. Lee.  

Inspired by a family history of Alzheimer’s disease, Lea Brovedani joined the ABC study in 2019. A mother of 2, Brovedani dedicated her time to the study with the future of her family and others in mind.

And not even the COVID-19 pandemic would keep her from living up to that dedication.

“I don’t think that research should stop because of this,” said Brovedani, who had a PET scan in July. “So many things have completely halted because of the pandemic, and I am certainly supportive of taking as many precautions as possible. But I still believe that in order for us to find answers for anything — including the pandemic, including Alzheimer’s, including different forms of cancer — that research needs to continue. I trust that Penn has my best interest at heart as well and will do everything to keep me safe.”

Aging can present many opportunities and challenges. Join Lisa Walke, MD, MSHA, AGSF, Chief of Geriatric Medicine at Penn Medicine, to learn more about some of the most common chronic health conditions we face as we age, such as arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and more. Dr. Walke will share tips for managing your health as you age and tools for living well with chronic illness.

Lisa M. Walke, MD, MSHA, AGSF is the Chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine for the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. Under her leadership, the division is developing clinical, research and educational programs that will foster Penn’s development into an Age-Friendly Health System. Dr. Walke’s scholarship focuses on improving health outcomes for older adults through the implementation and evaluation of innovative care delivery models. She was named a fellow of the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) in 2014, received the AGS Outstanding Mid-Career Clinician Educator of the Year award in 2017 and was named a Top Doctor in Geriatric Medicine by Philadelphia Magazine in 2020.

Questions? Contact Shakia Bundy, sbundy@ralstoncenter.org

Click here to register.

Join the Penn Memory Center and the Time Out team in a new, 8-week virtual exercise program: Shake It Up.

Led by Alice, Janelle, and Meryl, students in the Temple University Exercise and Sport Science program, Shake It Up will meet on Zoom at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesdays beginning September 30. The program will focus on coordination, muscle activation and meditation. This program is open to all members of the Penn Memory Center community, including all levels of mobility and care partners.

The class is free, but RSVP is required.

Questions? Contact timeout@temple.edu or leave a voicemail at 215-204-3364.

By Terrence Casey

Jordan Weiss, PhD

Dementia may play a larger role in US mortality than standard statistics show, according to research published in JAMA Neurology.

Former Penn Memory Center trainee Jordan Weiss, PhD, and co-authors studied more than 7,000 adults in a nationally representative cohort and combined the data with cause-of-death records on death certificates. They found that “the estimated percentage of deaths attributable to dementia was 2.7 times that calculated from vital statistics data on the underlying cause of death.” The authors explain that underreporting could be because of comorbidities and/or missing diagnoses.

The results further support the need to expand population-based interventions focused on dementia prevention and care, authors said. 

“Our findings suggest that the mortality burden associated with dementia may be greater than recognized. Moreover, racial and ethnic disparities in dementia mortality may be underestimated,” Dr. Weiss said. “Together, these results highlight the importance of expanding dementia prevention, care, and awareness in a culturally sensitive way to address the disproportionate burden of dementia faced by underrepresented minorities.”

By Sharnita Midgett, MPH

Studies to discover new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease have been revolutionized.

A person who has no cognitive problems — who’s busy working or traveling or caring for grandchildren — can undergo a PET scan to determine whether she has “elevated amyloid,” a high level of a protein associated with a heightened lifetime risk of developing dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease.

If it were you, how would you react?

Researchers participating in the Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer’s Disease (A4) Study are learning the answers to this important question. In the August 2020 issue of JAMA Neurology, “Short-term Psychological Outcomes of Disclosing Amyloid Imaging Results to Research Participants Who Do Not Have Cognitive Impairment” reports people who learned they had elevated amyloid did not experience an increase in negative psychological outcomes particularly depression and anxiety.

By Michele W. Berger, Penn Today

Mid-morning on a Wednesday in early May, Jean Haskell tries to quiet a dozen chatty adults on a Zoom call. “Alright, everybody, we’re going to start. We’re going to do a lot today. We’ll be getting ready for a performance next week, and we’ll be telling some jokes.”

She asks participants to say their name along with an adjective and gesture for everyone else to copy.

“My name is Charles. An adjective? Crude,” says one person, before holding up his thumb in hitchhiker fashion. There’s a collective chuckle.

Hellacious Helen makes horns on her head with two fingers and Suspicious Susan pretends to hold a telescope up to her eyes. After each one, the participants mimic the speaker, laughing at the silliness of it all. But as Haskell—who introduces herself as Jazzy Jean, replete with jazz hands—hoped it would, the exercise breaks the ice perfectly.

By Sharnita Midgett

The impact that blood pressure has on dementia risk has often been studied, and new research continues to study this relation. This year, researchers found that an average higher blood pressure in black individuals may contribute to racial differences in dementia risk. 

In an article titled, “Association Between Blood Pressure and Later-Life Cognition Among Black and White Individuals,” researchers analyzed data from five other studies related to heart health and stroke. These studies provided demographic data — information on race and sex — as well as data on brain health. Black Americans had a significantly faster decline in brain health and had a higher cumulative blood pressure than white Americans, according to the data in this study.

One of the researchers, Deborah Levine, MD, MPH, is an associate professor at the University of Michigan who has studied disparities in cardiovascular and brain health. She was motivated by her clinical experience seeing disparities across racial, ethnic, sociodemographic, and geographic backgrounds and was also “motivated by a sense of justice that disparities should be reduced if not eliminated.”  

By Kamila Ahmad 

Deterioration of a part of the brain known as the medial temporal lobe can cause an older adult to make more impulsive decisions. 

One decision-making process — temporal discounting — places a greater value on a smaller and immediate outcome while dismissing a better but delayed outcome: instant gratification, in other words.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center explored this cognition and found that individual differences in temporal discounting are driven by episodic memory function and that a deteriorating medial temporal lobe may impact the ability to delay gratification.  

This finding was reported in the September 2020 edition of the journal Neuropsychologia by Penn Memory Center Clark Scholar Karolina Lempert, PhD.

By Sharnita Midgett

Last month, the Aging Brain Cohort (ABC) study resumed in-person testing after a four-month hiatus. Jay Austin, 64, was the first study participant back in the MRI scanner.

Originally from New Jersey, Austin has worked as a senior-level administrator in many of the nation’s top law schools, including several in California. During his career, he spent two years working and living in Azerbaijan to assist in the establishment of a new university. When he is not traveling with his wife of 21 years, Tamara, reading historical non-fiction or visiting US presidential libraries, he is preparing for his next research visit at the Penn Memory Center.

Austin, who was previously enrolled in the ADNI 3 study, joined the ABC study in 2019. He spoke with Research Coordinator Sharnita Midgett about returning to the study in 2020: