MUST READS

An August 30, 2018 Science Magazine article spotlighted the “Alzheimer's funding bonanza,” with the NIH's annual budget for Alzheimer's and related dementias tripled, to $1.9 billion. According to the article, ““I am convinced that we are destined to fail to make the 2025 goal and therefore look like we have failed at our promise," says Alzheimer's researcher Samuel Gandy of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Some researchers also worry about focusing so much money on just Alzheimer's. The biomedical community "has mixed feelings" about such targeted funding, says biogerontologist Judy Campisi of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California, who wonders whether more should go to basic research.”

RESEARCH AND SCIENCE

An August 30, 2018 News Medical Life Sciences article looked at the concept that Alzheimer’s disease is ‘Type 3’ diabetes, as insulin resistance and glucose metabolism are involved in the three central pathological features of AD. The idea that having type 2 diabetes could potentially increase the risk of AD is gaining steam. According to the article, “Insulin helps the neurons in the brain to absorb glucose for healthy and efficient functioning, but if the cells in the brain become resistant to insulin this can lead to persistently high blood sugar levels causing damage to neurons. At the same time the cells are effectively starved of fuel. Both these factors can contribute to the pathology that eventually leads to Alzheimer’s disease.”

YOUTH FOCUS

Starting Sept. 14, 2018, The Youth Movement Against Alzheimer’s, through its social enterprise YouthCare, will offer FREE respite care provided by trained undergraduate and masters students to family caregivers with loved ones with dementia in Los Angeles. This model is based on an evidence-based grant-funded model, which has been operating for more than two years via TimeOut at UCLA. 

ALZ TECH

An August 27, 2018 Healio article reported that a machine learning-based model identified patients with dementia using data gathered in primary care called “Read codes.” According to the article, “With the expected growth in dementia prevalence, the number of specialist memory clinics may be insufficient to meet the expected demand for diagnosis. Furthermore, although current ‘gold standards’ in dementia diagnosis may be effective, they involve the use of expensive neuroimaging (for example, positron emission tomography scans) and time-consuming neuropsychological assessments which is not ideal for routine screening of dementia.”

PROFILES IN COURAGE

An August 30, 2018 Herald Times Reporter article spotlighted the story of Nan and Paul Jagemann. Paul was diagnosed with probable hippocampal-sparing Alzheimer's and died at age 60. Nan struggled, even with caregiver support, because she was much younger than the other local caregivers. Early-onset Alzheimer’s makes up 3 percent of diagnoses, but the number of people with the disease is growing as the population ages.