USA2 SPOTLIGHT

A December 23, 2016 U.S. News & World Report article explored how to help people living with dementia during holiday gatherings and features UsAgainstAlzheimer’s board member Meryl Comer. According to Comer, “Holidays are one of the most challenging times for caregivers and for those living with the disease, especially in the early stages…For those living with dementia who have just been diagnosed, they are smart, and they are hiding out as much as they can. And it's very hard for them. It takes a lot of energy for them to make things appear normal when they're confused.”

A December 15, 2016 WeWontWait Campaign Blog by Jill Lesser, President of WomenAgainstAlzheimer’s, provided an overview of how to have tough conversations about dementia and brain health. According to the post, “Re-uniting with family for the holidays is an ideal time to broach this topic, and can also serve as the first warning of a decline in health, especially if relatives have not been in regular, close contact with an older adult.”

MUST READS

A December 22, 2016 BuzzFeed News article profiled Alzheimer’s clinical trial participants and their lives with cognitive impairment. According to the article, “Few spoke about the families grappling with the erosion of their loved ones’ minds, or to the patients who have volunteered to take part in clinical trials. Yet without them, there will never be an effective treatment, however brilliant the scientists involved, and however determined Big Pharma is to find the next blockbuster drug.”

A December 22, 2016 News Medical article reported that the “Tau biomarker could lead to early identification of Alzheimer's disease pathology.” According to the article, “Drs. Maccioni and Farías have pioneered the technology that detects in human blood platelets the pathological oligomeric forms of brain tau protein in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative disorders.  More importantly, the ratio between this anomalous tau and the normal tau protein can discriminate AD patients from normal controls, and are associated with decreased cognitive impairment.”

A December 22, 2016 Baltimore Sun opinion piece explored the question: normal aging or dementia? According to Dr. Richardson, “There is now very good evidence that dementia appears to be decreasing in prevalence. But the diagnosis of dementia remains a clinical one, dependent on experienced physicians to nail down. While the right physician can pinpoint the diagnosis with 90 percent accuracy, it may take family members some effort to find that physician and convince him or her that their family member requires a thorough and appropriate evaluation.” Dr. James P. Richardson is chief of geriatric and palliative medicine at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore.

CLINICAL TRIAL DIVERSITY SPOTLIGHT 

A December 23, 2016 The New York Times article reported on the lack of diversity in cutting edge immunotherapy research for cancer. According to the article, “Mr. Jones is one of many patients who have benefited from lifesaving advances in immunotherapy. But he’s an outlier: He is African-American. As money pours into immunotherapy research and promising results multiply, patients getting the new treatments in studies have been overwhelmingly white. Minority participation in most clinical trials is low, often out of proportion with the groups’ numbers in the general population and their cancer rates. Many researchers acknowledge the imbalance, and say they are trying to correct it.”