Researchers are looking for ways to spot early warning signs in the brain of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Baylor College of Medicine is taking part in a nationwide initiative, funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health, which uses neuroimaging techniques to understand the evolution of brain changes from normal aging to mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. Finding early markers may lead to the advancement of treatments for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment, both of which cause memory loss in aging populations.
“What the study is meant to do is find out whether different types of neuroimaging are useful for following people over time and for tracking clinical changes in those people,” says Dr. Rachelle Doody, a professor of neurology and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “If we can perform neuroimaging scans and pick out the markers of neurological disorders, even before there are clinically significant symptoms, we could treat patients earlier.”
The National Institute of Aging, part of the NIH, will provide most of the $60 million in funding over five years to use neuroimaging in three groups of study participants – adults with mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s patients and a control group of people with no cognitive disorders – whose progress will be tracked for 2-3 years. The consortium includes approximately 50 institutions across the U.S. and Canada, with the University of California - San Francisco and UC - San Diego as the directing and coordinating sites, respectively.