USA2 SPOTLIGHT

An August 4, 2016 Atlanta Jewish Times article highlighted UsAgainstAlzheimer’s co-founder Trish Vradenburg and her role at the 2016 Hadassah National Convention. According to the article, “Trish Vradenburg, co-founder and vice chair of UsAgainstAlzheimer’s, presided over a panel discussing the rights of women in medical research…Vradenburg described Alzheimer’s, which took her mother’s life, as the “most feared disease that causes so much despair.” A former TV writer who lightened her message with humor, Vradenburg said there is hope against Alzheimer’s but also a need for support in promoting the effort. “If I can’t count on Jewish women,” she said, “I might as well pack it in.””

An August 4, 2016 Huffington Post piece by UsAgainstAlzheimer’s partner and advocate Greg O’Brien underscored the need to participate in clinical trials. According to O’Brien, “The GAP Foundation is hard at work connecting the dots that show clinical participation rates to date of less than 10 percent, and poll results confirming that 60 percent of Americans are willing or would consider participating in a clinical trial.”

UsA2 Press Statement: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) decision not to reimburse everyday Americans for using what the FDA determined to be an effective diagnostic tool was found to be “arbitrary and capricious” by a Federal court. The reason? Because Medicare is reimbursing for a less effective diagnostic tool and did not explain why it would not do so for a more innovative tool.

RESEARCH, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY  

An August 5, 2016 Forbes.com opinion piece by Dr. Jason Karlawish highlighted the need for patient and family centric Alzheimer’s care, particularly in the face of new technologies. According to Dr. Karlawish, “The coming Alzheimer’s technologies will arguably change my profession as technologies have changed fields like oncology and cardiology. Alzheimer’s doctors will pass less time talking with the patient and family about the patient and how they’re living with and making sense of the disease, and more time talking about the technologies. The Alzheimer’s doctors who run the centers will not be doctors like me who like to ask questions to write vivid narratives about a typical day. I’ll be replaced by different and probably younger doctors who like talking about the scans and the drugs. I fear one side effect of these technologies is that we’ll stop caring about our patients’ days.”

An August 5, 2016 BU Today article profiled Alzheimer’s researcher Carmela Abraham. According to the article, “So, in 2015, the Abrahams founded Klogene Therapeutics, Inc., with Carmela’s medicinal chemistry collaborator Kevin Hodgetts, director of the Harvard Medical School–affiliated Laboratory for Drug Discovery in Neurodegeneration (LDDN) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Klogene, which will develop novel therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease, grew out of Carmela’s work on Klotho, a large, multifunctional protein produced in the kidneys and brain that circulates in the blood and cerebral spinal fluid and may protect against Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.”

An August 4, 2016 New York Times article reported that “A drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis may have benefits against Alzheimer’s disease, researchers report.”

An August 4, 2016 MedPage Today article reported that “In one of the first studies of its kind, tau imaging was able to distinguish patients with Alzheimer's disease from those without, researchers reported.”

An August 4, 2016 Consumer Affairs article reported that researchers at the University of Warwick have “created a database that stores information on proteins that contribute to autophagy – an essential bodily process that regulates physical health, but which wears down as we age.”