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Alzheimer’s takes a disproportionate toll on women, according to a report released Wednesday from the Alzheimer’s Association. Women are far more likely to develop the fatal disease than men: one in six women over 65 will get it during their lifetime, compared with one in 11 men. And, not surprisingly, women are more likely to be caregivers for someone with Alzheimer’s, and to pay a bigger personal and professional price for that care than men do.
Read the USA Today article here.

Jonatha Brooke’s musical play, “My Mother Has 4 Noses,” is a mother-daughter, end-of-life love story complicated by religion and dementia. Every Saturday matinee in March includes a Talkback session with experts in the field of Alzheimer’s, dementia, and caregiving.

Jason Karlawish,MD, Associate Director of the Penn Memory Center, joins Jonatha on March 15, 2014 at 2pm at the Duke on 42nd Street in New York City.

The New York Times says of the play, “In a haunted and haunting play with music, Ms. Brooke is bearing witness, recounting the descent into dementia of her mother, Darren Stone Nelson, and her experience of caring for Ms. Nelson in the last years of her life.”

And the New York Post writes: “Jonatha Brooke’s affectionate, well-crafted, surprisingly funny new musical, “My Mother Has Four Noses,” is well worth your attention.”

https://www.dukeon42.org/Shows/2014/4Noses.aspx

NPR reported on an experimental blood test that can identify people in their 70s who are likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease in the next two or three years. Dr. Jason Karlawish, Associate Director of the Penn Memory Center, was interviewed on the ethical implications of such a test.

The knowledge of one’s risk of Alzheimer’s can be a good thing, says Dr. Karlawish, and that has been shown among people who chose to be tested for a gene that increases the risk of Alzheimer’s, he adds.

“Knowing their risk of developing cognitive impairment is very relevant to making plans around retirement and where they live,” he says. “So there is certainly a role for knowing that information.”

But the biggest concern about Alzheimer’s testing probably has to do with questions of stigma and identity, Dr. Karlawish says. “How will other people interact with you if they learn that you have this information?” he says. “And how will you think about your own brain and your sort of sense of self?”

You can read the full story at NPR.org.

Jason Karlawish, MD was featured in a Hot Topics: Issues in Neurology video segment on Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Karlawish discusses treatment in Alzheimer’s patients who are suffering from agitation and the value of MRI and PET imaging.

You can view the video here:
http://www.medpagetoday.com/HOTTOPICSWhatWorksWhatDoesnt/special-reports/SpecialReports-Videos/405

In 1984 the National Institute on Aging created the first Alzheimer Disease Centers. In the 30 years since, the ADC program has expanded to include 27 centers across the U.S. A recent investigation evaluating the performance of the ADCs was conducted by a team of researchers including John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, Director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center at the University of Pennsylvania.  The results were published on February 10, 2014 in JAMA Neurology.

The group collected every article published by ADC investigators between 1984 and 2012 and used social network analysis to analyze co-publication networks. They examined the frequency of collaborations and found that “the collaborations established within the context of the ADC program are increasingly inter-institutional, consistent with the overall goal of the program to catalyze multi-center research teams.”

“It seemed obvious to many of us that the NIA funded AD Center network was having a powerful impact on AD research, care, policy and public awareness, so it was gratifying to show in this study using a novel social network analysis that indeed, the ADCs foster high-impact inter-ADDC collaborative research,” said Dr. Trojanowski.

You can read the study here.

Jane Brody’s Personal Health column in the New York Times on February 17 brings light to the challenges and stresses of the  Alzheimer’s caregiver.  Read more here:

Caring for the Alzheimer’s Caregiver

Pennsylvania Secretary of Aging Brian Duke presented the Pennsylvania State Plan for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders on February 7, 2014 to Governor Tom Corbett.  The plan provides recommendations to the Governor on addressing the epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders in the commonwealth.  The report contains seven recommendations that were designed to address awareness, private and public partnerships, brain health, care and early diagnosis, family and caregiver support, healthcare delivery and workforce and research.  To view the Pennsylvania State Plan for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders, click here.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), the Alzheimer’s Association and The W. Garfield Weston Foundation have joined forces to  to inspire scientists to envision research projects that will use existing data and/or biological samples from two large-scale biomarker studies: the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) and the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI).

The three organizations have created and funded a new research grant program — Biomarkers Across Neurodegenerative Diseases — that will support initiatives including those that:

• analyze datasets to test hypotheses related to aging and neurodegenerative disorders;
• seek to identify panels or pathways that may play a role in disease mechanisms, such as around inflammation;
• pursue shared or disparate biochemical markers of disease risk, onset or progression

Although Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are distinct conditions, mounting evidence shows possible links between the genetics and brain changes associated with them. For example, analysis from PPMI has shown that levels of a protein implicated in Alzheimer’s disease (amyloid-beta) are lower in the cerebrospinal fluid of individuals with Parkinson’s compared to individuals without Parkinson’s. In addition, postmortem studies have found heightened load of amyloid-beta in the brains of some people with Parkinson’s and increased presence of a Parkinson’s-implicated protein (alpha-synuclein) in some people with Alzheimer’s.

Read more about the new initiative here.

The New York Times reported that the National Institutes of Health, ten drug companies and seven nonprofit organizations have initiated  a partnership intended to speed up development of drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease, Type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Participants in this five-year, $230 million effort will share data, meet regularly and work together to determine which findings are likely to lead to effective treatments. Their findings and data will be made publicly available.

The project is unique, said Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

“We are getting together in a way that has not happened before,” Dr. Collins said. “We are bringing scientists from different perspectives into the same room. They will leave their egos at the door, leave their affiliations at the door.”

“This is the type of ADNI-like partnership many of us have seen an urgent need for,  and I am excited Francis Collins has made this happen,” said John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, Co-Director, Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research (CNDR) and Director, Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

The goal of the partnership is to find new drug targets: molecules that can be attacked in order to stop or slow a disease. The Alzheimer’s initiative also aims to find reliable molecular signals of whether dementia is progressing, so that new drugs can be tested early enough to avert irreversible brain damage.

Read the full New York Times article here.

The Department of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, presents Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Director, National Institute of Mental Health, on February 6, 12:00pm – 1:00pm in the BRB II/III Auditorium. His topic will be “Rethinking Mental Illness.” More information at http://www.med.upenn.edu/psych/rounds.html.