USA2 SPOTLIGHT

According to a November 13, 2019 UsAgainstAlzheimer’s press release, Swiss-based Women’s Brain Project is joining the Global Alliance on Women’s Brain Health (GAWBH) to promote brain health and Alzheimer’s disease risk reduction. Switzerland is the third country to join UsA2’s Be Brain Powerful® campaign for women’s brain health. The U.S. campaign kicked off last November. The announcement came at a reception at the Lausanne Olympic Museum hosted by the GAWBH and Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer’s Disease (CEOi), both UsA2 affiliated. “We are excited to see how the Be Brain Powerful® campaign that launched last year in the U.S. resonates with women of all ages across cultures. By empowering women around the world with the tools to lead, we can track the emerging science that shows proactive measures may stave off cognitive decline and change the trajectory of brain health for ourselves, for our loved ones, and for future generations,” said GAWBH Co-Founder and Chair Meryl Comer.

A November 13, 2019 UsAgainstAlzheimer’s press release highlighted the creation of a UsA2 online Biomarkers Repository, to track research into Alzheimer’s biomarkers and diagnostics. According to UsA2 Chairman and Co-Founder George Vradenburg, “This online repository will be a constantly-updated source of information on biomarker and diagnostic research for policymakers, healthcare system leaders and the scientific community. It will be a fast-track roadmap to validated biomarker tools for use in research and diagnosis in clinical practice.” Patient stratification and target engagement are being studied as potential biomarkers for use in clinical practice as diagnostic tools for early detection and Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis.

DISPARITIES SPOTLIGHT

A November 12, 2019 UW Medicine Newsroom news release highlighted a new study which found that Caribbean Hispanics with African-derived ancestry in their APOE gene had 39 percent lower odds of developing Alzheimer’s disease than people with European-derived APOE. APOE is a major hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. “The results from our study have important implications for the use of personalized genetic risk in populations with diverse ancestries, even for well-established risk factors,” said senior study author Timothy Thornton of UW School of Public Health.

EVENTS AND RESOURCES

A November 11, 2019 The University of Kansas news alert spotlighted Dr. David Holtzman of Washington University in St. Louis, who will speak at the 16th Takeru Higuchi Memorial Lectures at the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy on Thursday, November 14, 2019. Dr. Holtzman’s talk will focus on targeting immune cells for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. “Right now many people are trying to develop new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease, because the ones we have are simply not effective. If we could find a drug that specifically deactivates the microglia just at the beginning of the neurodegeneration phase of the disease, it would absolutely be worth evaluating in people,” said Holtzman.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

A November 11, 2019 EurekAlert! news release pointed to a new study from RAND Australia which determined that the Australian health care system is ill prepared to disperse a future Alzheimer’s disease treatment (if and when it is developed). According to the release, “Researchers estimate that because of the capacity constraints, as many as 54,000 Australians with mild cognitive impairment could unnecessarily develop Alzheimer's dementia over about a decade while waiting for diagnosis and treatment after approval of a hypothetical Alzheimer's disease-modifying therapy.” “While there is no certainty an Alzheimer's therapy will be available soon, our work suggests that policymakers may want to consider strategies to reduce wait times if a disease-modifying therapy does arrive,” said lead study author Sangita M. Baxi.