USC Alzheimer Disease Research Center / Memory and Aging Center

University of Southern California is a leader in Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Research in the United States. Get Involved! [email protected] https://news.usc.edu/1/alzheimers-research-funding-usc-nih/

For Thursday, 11/20: Dr. Carol Franz from UCSD will be giving a talk on "Stress, Brain, and Aging" tomorrow (Thursday) Nov 21, at 3 pm, in the Hastings Auditorium of the Hoffman Building (USC Health Sciences Campus). A flyer that includes an abstract is attached. The talk is open to all. Please pass this along to anyone you think might be interested.

Our 10th Collaborative Conference for Professionals: Many Faces of Dementia: Caring Across Diverse Communities. Pre-register now to save your space: https://uscadrc.wufoo.com/forms/many-faces-2020/

There is still time to register for the Finch AD Symposium this Friday --please consider if you are USC faculty and want to collaborate & see latest research. Also if you are a USC student or post-doc. It's a free event on UPC Campus. https://gero.usc.edu/finch-symposium/ Please forward this post!

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Dr. Elizabeth Joe presenting at the ADC meeting in St. Louis

Researchers are looking at new ways to understand amyloid (sticky protein fragments that accumulate to form hard, insoluble plaques) in the brain and AD -- Not just if you have them, but also how long you have had them. Consider being part of a ADRC research study to help answer the question of plaques with brain imaging scans. In fact, last year, USC Researchers discover what may be earliest stage of Alzheimer’s amyloid plaque found in the brain signal mental decline yea...rs before symptoms appear. Older adults with elevated levels of brain-clogging plaques but otherwise normal cognition experience faster mental decline suggestive of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study led by the Keck School of Medicine of USC that looked at 10 years of data. Just about all researchers see amyloid plaques as a risk factor for Alzheimer’s. However, this study presents the toxic, sticky protein as part of the disease the earliest precursor before symptoms arise. To have the greatest impact on the disease, we need to intervene against amyloid, the basic molecular cause, as early as possible, said Paul Aisen, senior author of the study and director of the USC Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute (ATRI) at the Keck School of Medicine. This study is a significant step toward the idea that elevated amyloid levels are an early stage of Alzheimer’s, an appropriate stage for anti-amyloid therapy. Notably, the incubation period with elevated amyloid plaques the asymptomatic stage can last longer than the dementia stage. This study is trying to support the concept that the disease starts before symptoms, which lays the groundwork for conducting early interventions, said Michael Donohue, lead author of the study and an associate professor of neurology at USC ATRI. To participate in a research study, call: 323-442-7600 or email: [email protected]

Could an exercise bike and a dose of VR be the answer to fending off dementia? LOS ANGELES For three days a week, Wayne Garcia has been getting an unconventional workout. He starts by putting on a virtual reality (VR) headset. He then gets on a specially designed exercise bike and starts peddling. He is taking part in a study at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine to see if a dose of VR can help prevent age-related cognitive decline and dementia...Continue reading

Vast majority of dementia patients don’t receive specialty diagnosis or care A new USC study has found that most older Americans do not meet with a dementia specialist and the use of dementia specialty care is particularly low for Hispanics and Asians. In the first large study to examine the diagnosis of dementia in older Americans over time, researchers found the vast majority never meet with a dementia specialist and are instead overwhelmingly diagnosed and cared for by non...-specialists. Researchers at USC, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Washington used Medicare data to track dementia diagnoses of nearly a quarter of a million people over five years. The team found 85% of people first diagnosed with dementia were diagnosed by a non-dementia specialist physician, usually a primary care doctor, and an unspecified dementia diagnosis was common. One year after diagnosis, less than a quarter of patients had seen a dementia specialist. After five years, the percent of patients had only increased to 36%. The study, which also found the use of dementia specialty care was particularly low for Hispanic and Asian patients, was published Wednesday in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association. Dementia specialists are more familiar with subtypes of dementia and may be less likely, for example, to misdiagnose Lewy body dementia as Alzheimer’s disease and wrongly prescribe antipsychotic medications to patients, said co-author Julie Zissimopoulos, director of the Aging and Cognition program at the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics. Differences in dementia diagnosis and follow-up care Using a large Medicare dataset, researchers examined the types of physicians that diagnose dementia, what dementia subtype diagnoses were initially provided and how they changed over time, the extent to which individuals accessed specialty care and how it varied by gender, race and ethnicity. To read more go to: https://news.usc.edu//dementia-diagnosis-usc-study-special See more