Newswise — 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.”
To volunteer or learn more about the study, contact Philip Yeung at Columbia University by calling (212) 342-0522 or by emailing [email protected]. Volunteers must speak English or Spanish and have a person willing to assist them during at least five clinic visits and with telephone contacts from researchers.
To learn more about ADNI GO visit http://www.adcs.org/Studies/ImagineADNI.aspx and follow us on Facebook.
About ADNI: In addition to NIA, the original ADNI study involved other federal partners: the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, also part of NIH, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, another agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. To learn more about ADNI advances and the private-public partnership supporting the research, go to http://www.nia.nih.gov/NewsAndEvents/PressReleases/PR20090317biomarker.htm.
The NIA leads the federal government effort conducting and supporting research on the biomedical, social and behavioral issues of older people. For more information on aging-related research and the NIA, go to www.nia.nih.gov. The NIA provides information on age-related cognitive change and neurodegenerative disease specifically at its Alzheimer’s Disease Education and Referral (ADEAR) Center site at www.nia.nih.gov/Alzheimers. To sign up for e-mail alerts about new findings or publications, please visit either website.
Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) was established by the United States Congress to support the mission of the National Institutes of Health—improving health through scientific discovery. The foundation identifies and develops opportunities for innovative public-private partnerships involving industry, academia, and the philanthropic community. A non-profit, 501(c)(3) corporation, the foundation raises private-sector funds for a broad portfolio of unique programs that complement and enhance NIH priorities and activities. The foundation's Web site address is http://www.fnih.org.
The NIH—The Nation’s Medical Research Agency—includes 27 institutes and centers and is a component of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center is a multidisciplinary group that has forged links between researchers and clinicians to uncover the causes of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other age-related brain diseases and discover ways to prevent and cure these diseases. It has partnered with the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center at Columbia University Medical Center which was established by an endowment in 1977 to focus on diseases of the nervous system. The Center integrates traditional epidemiology with genetic analysis and clinical investigation to explore all phases of diseases of the nervous system. For more information about these centers visit: http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/taub/http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/sergievsky/ Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, pre-clinical and clinical research, in medical and health sciences education, and in patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Established in 1767, Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons was the first institution in the country to grant the M.D. degree and is among the most selective medical schools in the country. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and state and one of the largest in the United States. For more information, please visit www.cumc.columbia.edu.
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