Latest News

The first goal of the U.S. national Alzheimer’s plan is that, by 2025, researchers will discover ways to diagnose and treat patients before they have problems performing daily tasks like driving and managing finances, but the plan lacks a strategy to determine whether these treatments provide “meaningful clinical benefit,” two leading researchers argue in a recently published essay.

Drs. Jason Karlawish and Ken Langa wrote in the October 17, 2016, edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine that, since its creation in 2010, the National Alzheimer’s Project Act (NAPA) has encouraged joint efforts between the National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical companies to conduct clinical trials aimed at preventing or delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. At least five are planned or under way.

Legendary local sportswriter Bill Lyon has a long list of titles — journalist, columnist emeritus, Pulitzer Prize nominee — and now he can add one more: hero.

The new resume bullet point was given by Dr. Jason Karlawish during a live interview on WHYY’s Radio Times October 4.

“Bill Lyon is a hero, and he’s a hero because he has the courage to talk publicly about having Alzheimer’s disease,” Karlawish said. “He’s educating and empowering the nation to be able to talk about this disease and face it.”

The American health care system is out of date and only recently has taken on a national goal to improve the care of older adults, according to a leading researcher.

Speaking during a live interview as part of The Atlantic’s “The New Old Age,” Penn Memory Center Co-Director Jason Karlawish said that older adults are “the last casualties of the Cold War.”

Take a peek around the Penn Memory Center, and you’ll see room after room filled with vital technology.

Over here, a multi-million-dollar MRI provides an incredibly detailed look at a living human brain. Over there, a pristine lab evaluates spinal fluid, providing researchers with invaluable data.

But in a small clinical evaluation room, an Alzheimer’s doctor faces his new patient and deploys the most powerful technology at his disposal:

“What’s a typical day?”

Dr. Jason Karlawish, Penn Memory Center Co-Director, testifies before the Elder Justice Coordinating Council Wednesday, April 27, 2016. (Screenshot of livestream.)

Penn Memory Center Co-Director Dr. Jason Karlawish is the 2016 recipient of the Rosalie S. Wolf Memorial Award, given to a researcher or someone involved in research “in recognition of a significant contribution to the knowledge and development in the fields of abuse of elders or persons with disabilities or Adult Protective Services.”

The National Adult Protective Services Association (NAPSA) Conference Awards Committee selected Karlawish for his “extraordinary” contributions to the field.

A panel of (from left) Felicia Greenfield, Dr. Dawn Mechanic-Hamilton, Dr. David Wolk and Dr. John Trojanowski, listen to an attendee’s question at the 2015 Research Partner Thank You Breakfast.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center (ADCC) has been awarded an estimated $8.8 million over five years from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to continue its mission of investigating mechanisms, diagnostics, treatments and strategies for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and related dementias including Parkinson’s disease (PD), Parkinson’s disease dementia (PDD), Lewy Body dementia (LBD) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD).

Discoveries from Penn’s ADCC have advanced understanding of the development and progression of AD and related neurodegenerative dementias over the past 25 years, leading to national and international recognition of its research accomplishments.

The post-WWII era known as the Cold War had tens of thousands of casualties between conflicts in Korea and Germany. But decades after “tear down this wall,” Cold War casualties are still being created daily out of adults with dementia and their caregivers, said Penn Memory Center Co-Director Dr. Jason Karlawish.

“They’re casualties because the healthcare system fails to deliver the care they need,” Karlawish wrote in a Forbes column. “Few physicians are trained in geriatrics and even fewer as Alzheimer’s doctors. Older adults with cognitive complaints are typically consigned to a hasty diagnosis and even when they receive a diagnosis, they find minimal guidance on how to live with the disease.

“Many patients don’t even receive a diagnosis. They come to my memory center taking the mildly effective Alzheimer’s drugs and asking whether they have Alzheimer’s, or it is dementia, or just aging, and what’s the difference between them? Their experiences kindle fear and even suspicion about the healthcare system, feelings reinforced when they go out into the world and experience their autonomy under siege. Assessments of their capacity to make life’s important decisions are reduced to a single score on a simple test of cognition. And the system expects them to pay the majority of the costs of their care.”