IN MEMORIAM

An April 19, 2017 Central Maine.com article profiled the life of UsAgainstAlzheimer’s Vice-Chairman, Trish Vradenburg, who passed away this week. After a successful career as a screenwriter, she dedicated her life to fighting Alzheimer’s disease, in honor of her mother, Bea Lerner, who suffered from AD.

Trish's passing has also been noted by other outlets including: The Age, among others. 

USA2 SPOTLIGHT

Join our April Alzheimer's Talks on Friday, April 28, from 4-5pm (EST). Our guest is Greg O’Brien, author of “On Pluto: Inside the Mind of Alzheimer’s.” Ever since he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in 2009, Greg has been sharing stories of his daily fight with Alzheimer’s and giving voice to the millions of Americans who live with this cruel disease.

MUST READS

An April 21, 2017 St. Louis Post-Dispatch opinion piece by Drs. Timothy J. Eberlein, Victoria J. Fraser and David M. Holtzman (cancer, Alzheimer’s and infectious disease doctors at Washington University School of Medicine) urges Congress and the White House to increase 2018 NIH funding, and adopt a budget for the 2017 fiscal year before government funding expires at the end of this month. The NIH has been an invaluable force in advancing biomedical research and human health, therefore a lack of funding would be detrimental to science and medicine, hampering the discovery of new treatments for many diseases. 

According to an April 21, 2017 Bloomberg article, two new studies linked soda consumption to Alzheimer’s and dementia. The first, published in Stroke medical journal, found that consumption of artificially sweetened beverages was associated with a higher risk of stroke and dementia, including AD. The second, published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, found that higher consumption of sugary beverages was associated with markers for pre-clinical Alzheimer’s disease. 

An April 6, 2017 letter to Congressmen Tom Cole and Rosa DeLauro, with signatories representing broad support from members of Congress, urged them to support an increase in NIH Alzheimer’s research funding by $414 million for 2018. It argued that the nation is at a crossroads and AD has already reached crisis proportions as the number of people affected is expected to almost triple by 2050.

RESEARCH, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

An April 20, 2017 NPR segment and article reported on the use of electrical stimulation to boost the memory of people with dementia or brain injuries. When stimulation was delivered to the right place at the right time, it could improve memory performance by as much as 50%. "When memory was predicted to be poor, brain stimulation enhanced memory, and when it was predicted to be good, brain stimulation impaired memory,” according to Michael Kahana, Director of the Computational Memory Lab, University of Pennsylvania.

CAREGIVER CORNER

An April 18, 2017 Democrat & Chronicle article focused on the stress felt by young Alzheimer’s caregivers. According to Alanna Jacobs, who is the caregiver for her grandfather with AD, “I couldn’t sleep because the stress of what he could be doing made me so nervous I’d have to get out of bed. You get to the point where you’re so anxious all the time.”