Volunteers in New York, NY are being sought for a clinical study examining the subtle changes that may take place in the brains of older people many years before overt symptoms of Alzheimer's disease (AD) appear. Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center are specifically looking for people with the very earliest complaints of memory problems that affect their daily activities. The study will follow participants over time, using imaging techniques specifically developed to advance research into changes taking place in the structure and function of the living brain, as well as biomarker measures found in blood and cerebrospinal fluid.
More than 5.3 million people across the U.S. are suffering from AD, and every 70 seconds, another person develops this devastating disease. In New York alone, approximately 320,000 people aged 65 and older are currently living with AD, making finding a cure a pressing need in our local communities.
The National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the NIH Office of the Director are funding the $24 million, two-year Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative Grand Opportunity (ADNI-GO) study. Researchers seek to recruit local volunteers between the ages of 55 and 90 who may be transitioning from normal cognitive aging to an early stage of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), a condition that may progress to Alzheimer's disease, but are otherwise healthy. In addition to Columbia University Medical Center, there are 49 other sites across the United States participating in the study.
"ADNI-GO is part of an ongoing effort to establish imaging and fluid biomarker measures of Alzheimer's disease from the onset of mild symptoms to the advanced stages of the disease process," said NIA Director Richard J. Hodes, M.D. "By advancing understanding of the full spectrum of the disease, we'll be better able to identify who is at risk, track progression of the disorder, and devise measurements to test the effectiveness of potential prevention or treatment strategies."
The grant expands the efforts of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), a research partnership supported primarily by the NIA with private-sector support through the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. ADNI began in 2004 to establish neuroimaging and biomarker measures to track the changes taking place in the brains of 800 older people either free of symptoms or diagnosed with late-stage MCI and early Alzheimer's disease. ADNI is led by the Northern California Institute for Research and Education, a nonprofit foundation affiliated with the San Francisco VA Medical Center. Michael Weiner, M.D., is the principal investigator.
The new ADNI-GO effort enables researchers to continue studying nearly 500 of the original ADNI volunteers, including those in New York, NY, while expanding the study to include the new participants with early amnestic MCI. Newly enrolled participants and some original study volunteers will undergo a lumbar puncture to collect cerebrospinal fluids.
"We cannot end this terrible disease unless we know more about it," said Yaakov Stern, Ph.D., principal investigator at Columbia and professor of clinical neuropsychology in the Departments of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Psychology at the Taub Institute for the Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center. "This is where amazing volunteers, their friends and their families can make the difference in our success."
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