USA2 SPOTLIGHT

An October 17, 2017 WashingTech Podcast featured Jason Resendez, leader of UsAgainstAlzheimer's Latino Network and Coalition. Jason highlighted UsAgainstAlzheimer's efforts to leverage technology to engage patients and caregivers in the Alzheimer's drug development process through platforms like A-List, the growing impact of Alzheimer's on Latino families, and Meryl Comer's book, “Slow Dancing with a Stranger.” 

MUST READS

According to an October 17, 2017 Medical Xpress article, a report in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease points to differences in the ways men and women feel pain. These differences need to be considered to improve detection, evaluation and treatment of pain in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Better understanding of these sex differences could lead to more targeted and effective pain assessment and management strategies. 

An October 16, 2017 NPR article focused on the lack of diversity in brain imaging studies. Study participants tend to be white, educated and high income. When studies are adjusted to represent the US population, the results change dramatically, notably the definition of “normal.” 

An October 16, 2017 Tufts Now article spotlighted speakers at the Drs. Joan and Peter Cohn and Family Lecture on Nutrition, Inflammation and Chronic Disease. Keynote speaker Dr. Richard Isaacson of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic at New York-Presbyterian/Weill-Cornell Medical Center focused on nutrition, exercise and other lifestyle interventions that people can begin at any time. “Alzheimer’s disease starts in the brain more than twenty years before the first symptom. Alzheimer’s disease is not an older person’s disease. It’s a disease of younger and middle-aged people. And that’s how we have to shift the paradigm,” said Isaacson.

RESEARCH, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

An October 16, 2017 News Medical Life Sciences article reported that the National Institutes of Health awarded researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine a five-year, $9 million grant to look at genetics of healthy centenarians. According to Principal Investigator Jan Vijg, PhD, “Aging is arguably the key risk factor for the most common diseases that afflict us, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, most types of cancer and Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.”