Though November is the designated National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month since 1983, medical professionals and faculty in the LSU System work every day to research treatments for the disease, which has no known cure.
A reported 5.3 million Americans are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and an estimated 5.1 million of them are over the age of 65, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
Owen Carmichael, director of biomedical imaging at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, researches the relationship between the disease and vascular and cognitive health.
He said those who enter their older years with hypertension, diabetes and other heart conditions are at a higher risk for Alzheimer’s Disease. He hopes to reduce the chance for Alzheimer’s by treating these vascular afflictions.
“Those things are treatable right now, and Alzheimer’s isn’t,” Carmichael said. “If the two have a strong enough connection, we can make progress in searching for a cure.”
While there may be a tie between Alzheimer’s and heart conditions, Carmichael said it’s also possible for someone to be genetically predisposed to the disease and the Alzheimer’s could trigger the heart conditions. But there is also a possibility the two aren’t connected but run parallel to each other, Carmichael said.
The LSU System’s Alzheimer’s experts often collaborate, he said. Carmichael and Jeffrey Keller, director of the Institute for Dementia Research and Prevention at Pennington, often work together, as Keller’s expertise lies in drug trials and testing for Dementia and Alzheimer’s and Carmichael specializes in brain imaging. Together, they determine if certain Alzheimer’s drugs have an effect on the brain.
Symptoms of Alzheimer’s include more than simple memory loss and confusion. Other symptoms such as mood changes, withdrawal from social activities and difficulty completing tasks are common among patients. As these symptoms and more are discovered, Carmichael said the number of Alzheimer’s cases has increased.
“The number of cases in the year 2000 was about 5 million and the number of cases in 2050 is projected to be 25 million,” Carmichael said. “Those numbers go up and down over time, but the rough estimate stays the same.”
Despite the amount of ongoing research, Carmichael said there isn’t enough funding for the LSU Systems to make large steps forward. Universities such as LSU and Michigan State University are at a disadvantage because they do not have endowments like those held by Harvard University and The Mayo Clinic.
Carmichael said there are a few ways to acquire more funding for more research, such as garnering support from Louisiana state senators and the families of Alzheimer’s patients.
“Alzheimer’s is more of a societal disease,” Carmichael said. “It really affects a larger amount of people than the more than 5 million cases we have now.”
He said LSU does a good job of supporting its researchers, but he would like to see an Alzheimer’s research facility created in the LSU System.