Most patients with Alzheimer’s disease and the disease -related dementies (ADRD) of Alzheimer’s experience the gradual start and progression of cognitive symptoms, leading to decline for years or decades. In a small subset of patients, however, the symptoms start quickly, which leads to dementia within a year and full disability within two years of the start of the symptoms. A new study at Mayo Clinic wants to determine why patients with Alzheimer’s disease and ADRD develop this quickly progressive dementia (RPD).
The factors that give rise to extreme, fast progressive clinical properties are unknown. These cases are a challenge to treat in practice because there are many possible causes and diseases to consider, many tests that can be performed and a clear need to coordinate evaluations quickly. “
Gregg Day, MD, neurologist and clinical researcher at Mayo Clinic, Florida
Dr. Day will lead a team of Mayo Clinic researchers in Florida and Rochester, Minnesota to study the biology of RPD through a project financed by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIA/NIH).
In particular, the research team and employees want:
- Determine the factors that make patients with Alzheimer’s disease and ADRD susceptible to RPD.
- Study the contributions of amyloid and tau -toxic proteins and vascular changes in the brain on progress rates in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and ADRD.
- Identify cellular paths that contribute to rapid falls in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and ADRD.
The researchers are planning to collect clinical and genomic information from 120 different patients with rapid progressive disease from Alzheimer and ADRD in the next three years. Findings in patients with RPD, identified via Alzheimer Disease Research Centers Studies National, will be compared with data from participants with typical progressive disease of Alzheimer and ADRD who is registered in studies in the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Mayo Clinic.
The team hopes to learn how factors such as age, gender, medical history, structural and social determinants of health, genetic variants and other brain changes can make some patients more susceptible to rapid decline. Findings are validated by expansive protein analyzes in cerebrospinal fluid from an independent group of patients with autopsy-confirmed rapid progressive disease of Alzheimer and ADRD. The results will be expanded to identify biomarkers and disease -modifying goals that can improve the diagnosis and treatment of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and ADRD.
“We hope that the results of our study will inform new approaches, diagnostic tests and treatment goals that will improve the results in patients with AD/ADRD. The ultimate goal is to slow down the pathological progression of diseases in these patients, independently of their decline,” Dr. Day.
The research will combine the expertise of Mayo Clinic in digital innovation and counting medicine to involve patients in the United States.
This study will also use the clinical tests of Mayo Beyond Walls Program, with which patients can complete some, if not all assessments from the comfort of their own houses or local community facilities. The decentralized Clinical Trials Initiative is designed to remove barriers for the participation of clinical test by offering digital solutions and external services to recover the test experience for all involved, including participants, researchers, study teams and clinical care providers. Decentralized research – studies that are carried out outside the walls of traditional research facilities – can use a wide range of technologies and services, such as telehealth, remote monitoring, mobile phlebotomy, retail pharmacy and home health care.
The investigation will be made possible via National Institutes of Health Grant Award Award R01 AG089380.