African-Americans are at a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s – Optimum Senior Care – Chicago In Home Care – www.OptimumSeniorCare.com

Older African-Americans are about twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias as older whites but less likely to receive an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, which results in less time for treatment and planning. Visit our African-Americans and Alzheimer’s website for information on warning signs, research and care.

African-Americans are at a higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

Many Americans dismiss the warning signs of Alzheimer’s, believing that these symptoms are a normal part of aging. This is of even greater concern for African-Americans, who are two times more likely to develop late-onset Alzheimer’s disease than whites and less likely to have a diagnosis of their condition, resulting in less time for treatment and planning. By working together, we hope to reduce the risk factors and reverse the growing trend of Alzheimer’s disease among African-Americans. Sign up for our e-newsletter and get the latest info on treatments, research and care.

• 10 Warning Signs

  Your memory often changes as you grow older. But memory loss that disrupts daily life is not a typical part of aging.
  > Learn More

• A Caregiver’s Story

  Caregiver Wanda Young describes the benefits and importance of participating in clinical trials.
  > Learn More

• Brain Health

  Researchers have identified factors that signal a greater risk, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, lack of exercise and diabetes.
  > Learn More

• Leading the Way

  Solomon Carter Fuller, M.D., was one of the first known black psychiatrists and worked alongside Dr. Alois Alzheimer.
  > Learn More

Partnerships

The Alzheimer’s Association is proud to partner with Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.® (AKA) to help raise awareness about Alzheimer’s disease and increase education, care and support resources in the African-American community. This national partnership will engage both campus and alumni members of AKA through local community outreach efforts and participation in The Longest Day®, a team event to raise funds and awareness for the Alzheimer’s Association that takes place annually on the summer solstice.

Watch the AKA/Alzheimer’s Association partnership video >

http://www.optimumseniorcare.com/services/alzheimerscare.php

http://optimumseniorcare.com/blog/

https://www.facebook.com/OptimumseniorcareIL

We need your help to reach $40,000 – Alzheimer’s – Optimum Senior Care – Chicago In Home Care – www.OptimumSeniorCare.com

The goal is within reach. We can get there. But we need your help.
I’m talking about our $40,000 Matching Gift Challenge, made possible by the Buyers Viehman family. They understand, just as you do, how urgent it is that we raise funds for care, support and for research to advance the fight to end Alzheimer’s disease.
So, they’ve issued a challenge: Make your most generous gift to the Alzheimer’s Association, and they have pledged to MATCH the first $40,000 we raise with $40,000 of their own — doubling the impact of your support. Their gift will advance Alzheimer’s research efforts.
Every gift you send supports our mission to eliminate Alzheimer’s disease through the advancement of research; to provide and enhance care and support for all affected; and to reduce the risk of dementia through the promotion of brain health.
I’m asking you to support this important campaign today. With your help, I know we can reach the goal before the March 15 deadline. Please reach out with your gift to this Matching Gift Challenge now, while it can achieve double the impact.
Just look at how the $40,000 in matching funds made possible by the Buyers Viehman family can double the impact of your contribution today:

• Your gift of $35 can become $70.
• When you give $60 it can become $120.
• Your donation of $120 can become $240.
• Any amount you give, up to $40,000, can be matched, so please DONATE NOW.

Let’s not miss this chance to raise an additional $40,000. The deadline is quickly approaching and we need your help. Please make your gift now.

P.S. Please don’t miss this chance to have your gift go twice as far today. Every gift you send furthers our efforts in providing care and support and advancing critical research. Thank you for supporting this urgent campaign today.

http://www.optimumseniorcare.com/services/alzheimerscare.php

http://optimumseniorcare.com/blog/

https://www.facebook.com/OptimumseniorcareIL

Caregivers making an impact on The Longest Day – Alzheimer’s – Optimum Senior Care – Chicago In Home Care – www.OptimumSeniorCare.com

Jessica Harris and Michelle Davis both have lost close family members to Alzheimer’s disease. Read their stories of their family members own journeys of Alzheimer’s disease and what they are doing to raise critical awareness and funds for The Longest Day.

Caregivers making an impact on The Longest Day

Jessica Harris and Michelle Davis both have lost close family members to Alzheimer’s disease. Click the tabs below to read their stories of their family members own journeys of Alzheimer’s disease and what they are doing to raise critical awareness and funds for The Longest Day.

Story #1
By Jessica HarrisStory #2
Story told by Michelle Davis

My Grandmother ‘spicy’ personality and zest for life
By Jessica Harris – Caregiver & Granddaughter

When my dear friend Ylandus Roundy, Manager of The Longest Day, Alzheimer’s Association Illinois Chapter, asked me to participate in a volunteer event at her office, I immediately felt my paternal grandmother’s spirit calling me to action. In 2013, my wonderful grandmother passed from complications of  Alzheimer’s disease.

My grandmother was officially diagnosed in 2006, though like many families, we had missed some of the early signs years before due to a lack of awareness of the depths of the disease. We often attributed her less favorable behavior – such as her increased irritability in the evening – to her “spicy” personality. None of us knew that this was a symptom known in the medical world as sundowning or late–day confusion. We learned so much along her journey, particularly in my own household as my immediate family (my parents and I) were her primary caregivers. Though an experience unlike any other, we found ways to cherish the good times and the moments of clarity and to make new memories, and we gave her the best we could offer until her last day.

On behalf of my family, I have decided this year to lead a fundraising campaign and host a special family gathering to honor the fifth anniversary of my grandmother’s passing. She was a simple lady who valued family above all else, and though she lived to 82, we know Alzheimer’s robbed her of some of her glory years.

My grandmother was a first generation Sicilian American raised in New Orleans. As a result, our family carries a rich history of traditions, and we will infuse that culture into our campaign and event. Purple being the shade of choice for The Longest Day is befitting as it is one of the colors of Mardi Gras, representing justice.

It is my hope that there may one day be a cure, and finally break the curse of this dreadful disease. 

http://www.optimumseniorcare.com/services/alzheimerscare.php

http://optimumseniorcare.com/blog/

https://www.facebook.com/OptimumseniorcareIL

Researchers working on a blood test for Alzheimer’s brain protein – Optimum Senior Care – Chicago In Home Care – www.OptimumSeniorCare.com

Scientists are working on a blood test that may identify people who have high levels of brain beta-amyloid, a protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, beta-amyloid can only be detected in a living brain with a positron emission tomography (PET) scan or by measuring levels in cerebrospinal fluid. Researchers hope that if larger and longer-term studies confirm the test’s accuracy, drug developers will have a simple and inexpensive way to identify people at high risk of dementia and recruit them into clinical trials before irreversible brain damage has occurred.

Scientists in Japan and Australia have developed a blood test that can identify people who have high levels of a protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease. If confirmed by further research, this long-sought test could help in the increasingly desperate search for therapies that halt the progression of dementia, which affects tens of millions of people worldwide.

The test identifies people whose brains have high levels of amyloid-?, a protein that is a key player in Alzheimer’s disease, and which may either cause dementia or be a symptom of it. The researchers hope that drug developers could use the test to recruit individuals with dementia into clinical trials before irreversible damage to their brains has occurred — thus making the trials more reliable.

Molecular biologist Katsuhiko Yanagisawa at the Center for Development of Advanced Medicine for Dementia in Obu, Japan, and his colleagues developed the prototype biomarker test. They published their work online on 31 January in Nature¹.

Scientists around the world have been searching for a simple blood test for dementia for the past 15 years. “At first it wasn’t obvious that it would be possible for brain pathology to be measurable in the blood, but we have been getting ever closer,” says neuroscientist Simon Lovestone at the University of Oxford, UK, who has led other studies to find blood biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease. “This paper provides the best results I’ve seen so far.”

High failure rate

All candidate drugs designed to halt Alzheimer’s disease have failed in clinical trials so far, and many pharmaceutical companies have abandoned the field. Scientists suspect that the design of such trials might be the problem, rather than the drugs being tested. Until now, there has been no reliable way to identify people with the early stages of dementia, so most clinical trials have recruited people whose clinical symptoms are already apparent. At this point, brain damage associated with amyloid-? has already occurred and it may be too late to reverse it, says Yanagisawa.

Until now, the only way to identify amyloid-? in the brain — short of an autopsy — has been to image the brain using positron-emission tomography, or to measure levels of the protein directly in cerebrospinal fluid from the spinal cord. Both of these procedures have been used to help recruit patients into recent trials, but the tests are expensive and uncomfortable.

To measure the levels of several amyloid-? fragments in blood samples, as well as a fragment of a larger protein from which amyloid-? derives, Yanagisawa and his colleagues combined two existing techniques — immunoprecipitation and mass spectroscopy. Their results matched those achieved through brain imaging and the analysis of spinal-cord fluid in two separate cohorts involving 121 people in Japan and 252 people in Australia. Each cohort included individuals aged between 60 and 90. Some of the participants were healthy; some showed mild impairment in their cognitive skills; and some had Alzheimer’s disease.

The authors say that larger and more long-term studies are needed to confirm how accurate the blood test is at identifying high levels of amyloid-? in human brains. If it is highly accurate, then the test could help recruitment for clinical trials, because it is relatively easy and cheap to do.

http://www.optimumseniorcare.com/services/alzheimerscare.php

http://optimumseniorcare.com/blog/

https://www.facebook.com/OptimumseniorcareIL

Take action — support the BOLD Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act today – Alzheimer’s – Optimum Senior Care – Chicago In Home Care – VISIT: www.OptimumSeniorCare.com

“Alzheimer’s is the most under-recognized threat to public health in the 21st century.” — Dr. David Satcher, former U.S. Surgeon General and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
We need your help. Please contact Congress today and ask for support of the Building Our Largest Dementia (BOLD) Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act.
The BOLD Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act would direct the CDC to do the following:

• Establish Alzheimer’s Centers of Excellence to identify and help implement effective interventions such as ways to increase early detection and diagnosis, reduce risk and prevent avoidable hospitalizations.
• Award funding to public health departments to help implement those interventions identified by Alzheimer’s Centers of Excellence in communities across the country.
• Increase data collection, analysis and timely reporting of Alzheimer’s disease and caregiving data.

Please tell Congress to support the BOLD Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act today.
Thank you,

John Funderburk
Senior Director of Advocacy
Alzheimer’s Association

SUPPORT THE BOLD INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ALZHEIMER’S ACT

Congress is taking steps to address Alzheimer’s as a public health issue. Senators Collins, Cortez Masto, Capito and Kaine, as well as Representatives Guthrie, Tonko, Smith and Waters introduced the bipartisan BOLD Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act to improve our nation’s Alzheimer’s public health infrastructure.
Tell your Senators and Representative to support this legislation by taking action below.
The BOLD Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act (S. 2076/H.R.4256) would improve the nationwide response to this public health crisis by advancing effective public health interventions across the country and in your state. The legislation would also provide resources to state and local public health officials to increase early detection and diagnosis, reduce risk, prevent avoidable hospitalizations, reduce health disparities, support the needs of caregivers and support care planning for people living with the disease.
Additionally, collecting data on cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s caregivers can help identify the impact of dementia in your state, leading to more effective action. This legislation would increase the collection, analysis and timely reporting of data on cognitive decline and caregiving issues.

http://www.optimumseniorcare.com/services/alzheimerscare.php

http://optimumseniorcare.com/blog/

https://www.facebook.com/OptimumseniorcareIL