2020

More than 5 million people of all ages are living with Alzheimer's in America and that number is expected to rise to nearly 14 million by the 2050. According to the Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Disease is the sixth leading cause of death in this country — killing more Americans than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. However, research presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) shows clear data that improving lifestyle factors can influence the development and the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Here are eight ways to reduce your risk of this devastating disease: Add more fruits and vegetables…

In 1964, Keith Swayne, then a graduate student at UC Berkeley, went on a blind date with local school teacher Judy Kjellberg. He was head over heels, and just two weeks later, he proposed to her. Over the next 50 years, they raised a son and daughter, pursued their careers and engaged with the Orange County community through nonprofit work. Judy created the Orange County Community Foundation in 1989, laying the groundwork for it to grow into a change-maker with assets today in excess of $400 million, supporting various causes across the region. But during the final decade of their…

Considerable: “Scientists have known for a long time that inflammation is a driver of Alzheimer’s disease, but inflammation is complex and involves many factors,” said UCI MIND faculty member Dr. Frank LaFerla, dean of UCI School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, where the research was conducted. “That’s why we decided to look at TOM-1.” … “You can think of TOM-1 as being like the brakes of a car, and the brakes aren’t working for people with Alzheimer's,” LaFerla said. “This research shows that fixing the brakes at the molecular level could provide an entirely new therapeutic…

MedPage Today: Is it safe to share Alzheimer's disease biomarker results with older adults who don't have cognitive impairment? In the short-term at least, the answer appears to be "yes," according to a study of Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer's Disease (A4) clinical trial candidates. Older Adults who learned they had elevated amyloid levels didn't experience more short-term depression, anxiety, or suicidality than those who learned they didn't have elevated amyloid, reported Joshua Grill, PhD, of University of California, Irvine, and colleagues in JAMA Neurology. ... This may be the largest study to date about delivering Alzheimer's biomarker information to cognitively unimpaired…

UCI MIND, the Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders at UCI, has been awarded a $14.4 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, one of the National Institutes of Health, to sustain critical research and education as Orange County’s only Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. The NIA funds only 32 of these centers at major academic institutions across the U.S. They conduct groundbreaking research to improve the understanding, diagnosis, care and treatment for people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. “The value of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center is immeasurable to both the campus and the community,” said Pramod…

HealthDay - July 22, 2020 Maria Corrada, a professor of epidemiology at the Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders at the University of California, Irvine (UCI MIND), said, "Some of the characteristics found to be related to resistance and resilience to Alzheimer's pathology can be changed or modified -- pulse pressure, smoking, paid work and life satisfaction." … "We believe that there are things we can do with our lifestyle that can help us maintain good cognitive health," she said.

Contributed by UCI MIND faculty member Kei Igarashi, PhD. In a paper recently published in Neuron, our lab found for the first time that “remapping” of hippocampus place cells, a brain circuit function to distinguish distinct environments, is disrupted in an Alzheimer’s disease mouse model. Our work suggests that remapping impairment is a circuit mechanism causing spatial memory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease. We hope that, by developing methods to reactivate remapping, we can develop new treatments for spacial memory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease patients in a near future.

National Institutes of Health grant helps local researchers continue work on cause and treatment of dementia. The National Institutes of Health has awarded $14.4 million to the UCI MIND institute at UC Irvine to continue its crucial work in the study of Alzheimer’s disease, for which there remains no cure or prevention. UCI MIND, formally known as the Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders, is one of only 32 Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers around the country funded by the National Institute on Aging, an arm of the NIH. UC Irvine is one of the original half-dozen research centers established…