RESEARCH New project to gather evidence of Alzheimer's in living patients

The foundation has received more than $20 million in grants for the project.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
WASHINGTON -- Starting next spring, researchers will ask 800 people in the United States and Canada to let them watch their brains for physical signs of mild memory loss and early Alzheimer's disease.
The five-year, $60 million project will try to determine which brain imaging techniques and biological markers give the best information about what's happening inside the brain, perhaps even before memory loss becomes noticeable to friends and family.
Although an estimated 4.5 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, doctors have no way to tell an individual actually has the disease beyond results from standardized memory and functional tests. Doing a physical examination of the brain after the patient dies is the only way to be sure dementia was caused by Alzheimer's when doctors spot telltale amyloid plaque deposits, nerve tangles and missing cells.
Need evidence
Without clear physical evidence of the progression of the disease in living patients, researchers are hard-pressed to determine whether a new drug or other therapy is effective at preventing or slowing the progress of the degenerative illness. Currently, the only drugs available for the disease help reduce some symptoms. They don't halt deterioration of the brain.
"The typical study of an intervention for this disease costs $5 million to $10 million to run because of the number of patients and the time it takes to evaluate them. One of the big goals of this project is to accelerate those studies and make them less costly," said Dr. Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, which is coordinating the imaging initiative along with the national Institutes of Health Foundation.
The foundation has lined up corporate and other private grants of more than $20 million toward the project; the government will cover the rest.
Greatest potential
"Brain imaging seems to offer the greatest potential for tracking the progression of Alzheimer's and simplifying clinical trials," said Dr. Michael Weiner, director of the Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Disease at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco and principal investigator for the study.
"Those of us doing brain imaging research believe we can recognize how the brain changes in normal aging and identify specific changes that are related to Alzheimer's disease.
"But every lab is doing something a bit different. Some people are using PET [positron emission tomography] and some varying types of MRI [magnetic resonance imaging]. We need to identify the best methods, what would make the best standard," said Weiner, who is also on the medical faculty at the University of California-San Francisco.
Other supporters
Hodes and Weiner spoke to reporters during a science news conference sponsored by the American Medical Association. In addition to several drug companies, the project is being backed by the Alzheimer's Association, the Institute for the Study of Aging, the federal Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
Starting next spring, the study will enroll about 800 people aged 55 to 90 at about 50 participating medical centers in the United States and Canada. There will be 200 older adults in normal health to act as controls, 200 diagnosed with Alzheimer's and 400 suffering from mild cognitive impairment -- a form of memory loss that doesn't interfere with daily activities, but indicates a patient is at high risk of developing Alzheimer's later.