Sunday Reads: Financial Fraud Among Older Adults

Editor’s Note: Here at the Penn Memory Center, the communications team has been trying out a weekly letter we call “Sunday Reads” to keep you updated on what’s been happening and what we’re currently reading in our office. To see this in your inbox first, fill out your name and email address at the top of your screen or email joyce.lee2@uphs.upenn.edu.

Older Americans lose billions of dollars each year due to fraud, and some of the most vulnerable people in that subset are individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

In fact, before an individual is even diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, his or her bank accounts may shed light on a clinical diagnosis that’s yet to come.

“In some sense, the banking and financial services industries are on the front line of screening for cognitive decline in America,” PMC Co-Director Jason Karlawish, MD, told ABC7 in a recent article.

Dr. Karlawish goes on to detail the steps he’s taking to help protect individuals from elder fraud, as part of his self-developed strategy known as “Whealthcare.”

Recognizing Alzheimer’s Disease

Of course, there are many other types of neurodegenerative diseases beyond Alzheimer’s disease. To distinguish among the types, various technologies come into play, such as a tau positron emission tomography or, simply put, a PET scanner that identifies an Alzheimer’s-linked protein called tau.

In a cross-sectional study, researchers set out to test how accurate tau PET tracers are at distinguishing Alzheimer’s disease from other dementias. Their participant pool included 719 patients who were either cognitively normal or clinically diagnosed at a medical center in South Korea, Sweden, or the United States. The findings, which are published in JAMA, found that a tau tracer called “flortaucipir” was able to correctly identify Alzheimer’s disease cases versus other neurodegenerative diseases at a high rate.

It’s an exciting find, but there’s still much more research to be done before it’s introduced in a clinical setting, William Klunk, MD, PhD, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pittsburgh expressed to Alzforum.

“While the diagnostic discrimination was impressive for the main purpose of distinguishing non-AD disorders from clinical AD, the performance was not as impressive in [mild cognitive impairment] due to AD,” Dr. Klunk wrote in the Alzforum comments section.

Upcoming Events

We had a wonderful time at our kick-off of Dance for Health last week. We’d love for you to join us Saturday, October 6 for our next session. It’s an action-packed weekend because the following day, October 7, we’ll have our first Cognitive Comedy program of Fall 2018. You can sign up here. We look forward to seeing you!

Lastly, on Tuesday, October 2, the Ralston Center is hosting a free education program called “Memory Loss, Dementia and Alzheimer’s: The Basics.” Registration is required.

Sincerely,

The PMC Communications Team
Terrence Casey, Joyce Lee, Janissa Delzo, Linnea Langkammer, and Sharnita Midgett

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