News out of Alzheimer’s international conference
http://www.alzheimers-illinois.org/enewsletter/august2013/aaic.asp
More than 5,000 people from 70 countries attended the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference® July 13 through July 18 in Boston. The event, which drawsdementia and neuroscience researchers from around the world, featured renowned speakers and revealed several new developments in the field.
These include links between cancer and chemotherapy and risks of developing Alzheimer’s disease, the scientific validity of online memory tests and increased availability of data for researchers worldwide.
More than 5,000 people from 70 countries attended the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference® July 13 through July 18 in Boston. The event, which draws dementia and neuroscience researchers from around the world, featured renowned speakers and revealed several new developments in the field.
These include links between cancer and chemotherapy and risks of developing Alzheimer’s disease, the scientific validity of online memory tests and increased availability of data for researchers worldwide.
Most kinds of cancer are associated with a significantly decreased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study of 3.5 million veterans reported recently at AAIC. In addition, the study suggested that chemotherapy treatment for almost all of those cancers conferred an additional decrease in Alzheimer’s risk.
A growing body of evidence suggests a possible association of cancer with reduced risk for Alzheimer’s disease; until now, whether the association differs between cancer types or is modified by cancer treatment is unknown.
Dr. Laura Frain, a geriatrician at VA Boston Healthcare System, and colleagues analyzed the health records of 3,499,378 veterans age 65 and older who were seen in the VA health care system between 1996 and 2011 and who were free of dementia at baseline. The objective was to evaluate the relationship between a history of 19 different cancers, cancer treatment and subsequent Alzheimer’s disease.
Over a median follow-up of 5.65 years, 82,028 veterans were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Twenty-four percent of those veterans with Alzheimer’s had a history of cancer, while 76 percent did not.
The researchers found that most types of cancer were associated with reduced Alzheimer’s risk, ranging from 9 percent to 51 percent. Reduced risk was greatest among survivors of liver cancer, cancer of the pancreas, cancer of the esophagus, myeloma, lung cancer and leukemia. Cancers that did not confer a reduced Alzheimer’s risk, or were associated with an increased risk, included melanoma, prostate and colorectal cancers.
Online tests for Alzheimer’s disease suspect
An expert panel found that 16 freely accessible online tests for Alzheimer’s disease scored poorly on scales of overall scientific validity, reliability and ethical factors, according to new data reported at AAIC.
The panel, which included geriatricians, human-computer interaction specialists, neuropsychologists and neuroethicists, reviewed the tests, specifically evaluating the scientific validity and reliability of the assessments, their human-computer interaction features and ethics-related factors. The tests were evaluated on a scale from 1 (very poor) to 10 (excellent).
The researchers found that most of the tests scored poor or very poor for overall scientific validity and reliability.
All 16 tests scored poor or very poor on the evaluation criteria for ethical factors. According to Julie Robillard, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia, who presented the findings, ethical issues with the tests included overly dense or absent confidentiality and privacy policies, failure to disclose commercial conflicts of interests, failure to meet the stated scope of the test and failure to word the test outcomes in an appropriate and ethical manner.
Ten out of the 16 tests scored fair for appropriateness of human-computer interface for an older adult population. This suggests that the visual aspects of the tests and the motor tasks required would be suitable for older users.
Data now freely available to researchers worldwide
During the international conference, the Alzheimer’s Association and the Brin Wojcicki Foundation announced that massive amounts of new data have been generated by the first “Big Data” project for Alzheimer’s disease. The data will be made freely available to researchers worldwide to quickly advance Alzheimer’s science.
The project obtained whole genome sequences on the largest cohort of individuals related to a single disease – more than 800 people enrolled in the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative.
The genome sequencing data – estimated to be 200 terabytes – will be housed in and available through the Global Alzheimer’s Association Interactive Network (GAAIN), a planned massive network of Alzheimer’s disease research data made available by the world’s foremost Alzheimer’s researchers from their own laboratories. The network funded by an initial $5 million dollar investment by the Alzheimer’s Association, made possible due to the generous support of donors.
“By fostering a higher level of global data sharing, GAAIN will accelerate investigation and discovery in Alzheimer’s through a system comparable to a search engine like Google or Bing for relevant data,” said Maria Carrillo, Ph.D., Alzheimer’s Association vice president of Medical and Scientific Relations.
To learn more about these findings and others, go to alz.org/aaic.
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