Dementia Matters

AAIC Special Series Part 2:

Attending scientific conferences is usually a major commitment, often requiring attendees to travel, pay attendance fees, and take time out during the day to learn about groundbreaking research. Recent conferences like the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) are opening their doors virtually to make the events more accessible to research participants, care partners, and the general public. Sarah Walter joins the podcast as part of our special series previewing AAIC 2022 to discuss her article on how virtual scientific conferences impact research participant engagement and why it’s important for participants to hear about the research they’re involved in.

Guest: Sarah Walter, MSc, program administrator, Alzheimer's Clinical Trials Consortium, Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute, University of Southern California

AAIC is the world’s largest forum for the dementia research community. Register for the plenary events, which are free to the public with registration, at the AAIC website.

Read Walter’s article, “Can Virtual Scientific Conferences Facilitate Two-Way Learning between Dementia Researchers and Participants?” through the National Library of Medicine.

Learn more about Sarah Walter on the Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials Consortium website.

Find transcripts and more at our website.

Email Dementia Matters: [email protected]

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Subscribe to the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center’s e-newsletter.

AAIC Special Series Part 1:

To kick off our month-long special series previewing the 2022 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, or AAIC, we’ve invited  Claire Sexton, senior director of the Alzheimer’s Association’s scientific programs, to join us to discuss the goals of AAIC, how the pandemic impacted the influential conference, and what she’s looking forward to at this year’s event.

Guest: Claire Sexton, DPhil, senior director of scientific programs and outreach, Alzheimer’s Association

The AAIC is the world’s largest forum for the dementia research community. Register for the plenary events, which are free to the public with registration, at the AAIC website.

Learn more about Dr. Claire Sexton on the Alzheimer’s Association website.

Find transcripts and more at our website.

Email Dementia Matters at [email protected]

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Subscribe to the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center’s e-newsletter.

A do-not-resuscitate, or DNR, order is used to indicate when a patient chooses to forgo resuscitation, however recent analysis shows that multiple studies have connected the presence of DNR orders to elevated death rates, poorer medical care, and negative health outcomes. Dr. Jonathan Baktari joins the podcast to discuss the findings from this analysis, how it can impact individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, and how these concerns can be addressed.

Guest: Jonathan Baktari, MD, CEO, chief medical officer, e7 Health

Read about Dr. Baktari’s analysis, “DNR Orders Can Lead to Worse Care & Increase Death Rates,” on the e7 Health website.

Learn more about Dr. Baktari at his bio on his website.

Find transcripts and more at our website.

Email Dementia Matters: [email protected]

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Subscribe to the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center’s e-newsletter.

American literature professor and author Cindy Weinstein and behavioral neurologist Bruce Miller join the podcast to discuss their latest book, "Finding the Right Words: A Story of Literature, Grief, and the Brain", a dual-memoir that alternates between Weinstein’s memories of her father who experienced early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and Miller’s scientific responses. They discuss their writing process, developments in Alzheimer's disease research, and their experiences as care partners and care providers to those experiencing dementia.

Guests: Cindy Weinstein, PhD, Eli and Edythe Broad Professor of English, California Institute of Technology and Bruce Miller, MD, director, University of California San Francisco Memory and Aging Center

5:36 What brought the two of you together to write Finding the Right Words?

7:40 Cindy, how long have you thought about writing this book about your father, and how long did it take you to write this book?

14:36 What did you want the reader to take away from this construction and this layout of your novel?

18:52 How does early onset Alzheimer's disease progress differently than the more common late-onset Alzheimer's disease?

28:05 Bruce, you write a response in the book from a neurological scientific perspective on love later in the disease. Can you summarize your perspective on that?

Learn more about Mind Readers, the book club by the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, and their special events by signing up for their e-newsletter. Register for the virtual discussion with authors Professor Cindy Weinstein and Dr. Bruce Miller on July 13 at 6pm CST.

Read more about Professor Weinstein and Dr. Miller’s book, Finding the Right Words: A Story of Literature, Grief, and the Brain.

Learn more about Professor Cindy Weinstein, Dr. Bruce Miller, and their journey to writing Finding the Right Words at their website.

There are many conflicting studies on how alcohol consumption can impact a person’s health, with some studies suggesting light drinking can protect against coronary heart disease and others concluding that drinking can increase your risk for cancer. What does research say about alcohol and the brain? Dr. Remi Daviet joins the podcast to discuss his latest study that found that just one alcoholic drink a day was associated with brain shrinkage, and drinking more could increase that rate exponentially over time.

Guest: Remi Daviet, PhD, assistant professor, Wisconsin School of Business

3:40 How do you suggest people balance all of the conflicting messages surrounding research on alcohol consumption?

7:30 Is there an interaction between alcohol consumption and getting older?

8:10 What did your results show in this study?

13:45 How are you defining alcohol consumption? What is a unit of alcohol defined as for beer, wine, and hard alcohol?

Read Dr. Daviet’s study, Associations between alcohol consumption and gray and white matter volumes in the UK Biobank, through the online journal Nature.

Read more about Dr. Daviet on his website and through his bio on the Wisconsin School of Business website.

In honor of Women’s Health Month, Dr. Jessica Caldwell joins the podcast to discuss sex differences in aging and Alzheimer’s disease. She explains some of the ways women experience aging and Alzheimer’s disease differently than men and how she incorporates research findings into patient care. 

Guest: Jessica Caldwell, PhD, director, Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement Prevention Center, Cleveland Clinic in Las Vegas, assistant professor, Case Western Reserve University

2:59 What are the sex differences in experiencing normal aging and in experiencing Alzheimer’s disease?

7:33 Why are women more affected by Alzheimer’s disease than men?

10:03 Are there other theories that have been speculated but aren’t true regarding the differences between men and women aging?

23:18 What type of prevention approaches do you discuss in your clinic?

The Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement Prevention Center at Cleveland Clinic in Las Vegas is the world’s first Alzheimer’s prevention center exclusively for women. Learn more at their website.

Read the referenced studies by Dr. Caldwell on differences in brain health across sexes through the National Library of Medicine’s website, specifically the 2021 study on tau protein differences, the 2018 study on amyloid level differences, and the 2022 study on cortical thickness differences. 

The Alzheimer’s Association has a women’s and Alzheimer’s webpage to learn more.

The US Department of Health & Human Services Office on Women’s Health sponsors National Women’s Health Week.

A graduate student from the University of Wisconsin–Madison is pushing for the disaggregation of data in research to better understand how individuals from different ethnic subgroups are represented as research participants and as researchers. Kao Lee Yang began writing and discussing the topic after the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study rejected her application for not meeting their racial and ethnic underrepresentation criteria, despite often being the only Hmong American scientist in many research spaces. Yang joins the podcast to discuss her opinion piece for STAT News, the problems with using aggregated data, and how the push to study individual ethnic groups could improve Alzheimer’s disease research.

Guest: Kao Lee Yang, MPA/PhD candidate in the Neuroscience and Public Policy Program and Bendlin Laboratory, University of Wisconsin–Madison

6:12 Why is combining all Asian people into one category detrimental? What is improved when this population is broken down by specific heritages and ethnicities?

8:40 How did people respond to your initial article in STAT News?

9:30 Why do you think it’s important to look at the individual ethnic groups within research?

11:17 How does the problem of aggregating data on Asian Americans impact the field of Alzheimer’s disease research?

Read Yang’s opinion piece, “I’m almost always the only Hmong American scientist in the room. Yet I was told I come from a group overrepresented in STEM,” on STAT News’ website.

Read Yang’s correspondence, “Disaggregate data on Asian Americans — for science and scientists,” on Nature’s website.

To learn about more Hmong researchers and scientists like Kao Lee Yang, follow the Twitter account she recently launched, @HmongInBioSci.

Read about Alzheimer’s disease research in the Bendlin Lab.

Dr. Cynthia Carlsson and Daniel A. King join the podcast to discuss some of the unique ways that Alzheimer’s disease affects Veterans and Native Americans. Their work at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center allows them to connect with people who are at higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease and help educate them on how to maintain brain health, both through Dr. Carlsson’s research and clinical practice and Mr. King’s outreach to Veterans and Native Americans. Discussing the importance of current outreach and educational efforts as well as what they’ve learned from engaging with Veterans and Native Americans, Dr. Carlsson and Mr. King describes how understanding different cultures and community experiences can help Alzheimer’s disease research better support underserved populations.

Guests: Cynthia Carlsson, MD, MS, professor of medicine and Alzheimer’s disease researcher, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, geriatrician, William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital, and Daniel A. King, member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, Veteran recruitment coordinator, Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center

1:47 Why do Veterans have a higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease?

2:52 What does this new program at the ADRC, focused on Veterans, look like, and why have it here?

5:19 How do your caregiving experiences influence the conversations you have educating others about Alzheimer’s disease?

20:25 What needs to change within research to do a better job serving veterans, Native Americans, and other underserved populations?

Read more about Dr. Cynthia Carlsson in her bio. 

Read about Veterans and Alzheimer’s disease on our website.

Read about Native Americans and Alzheimer’s disease on the Alzheimer’s Association website or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control website.

Research in the field of fluid biomarkers is leading to new developments in Alzheimer’s disease identification, including new tests that can predict Alzheimer’s based on biomarkers in blood. Ahead of his keynote address as part of Alzheimer's Disease & Related Dementias Research Day on April 5, 2022, Dr. Thomas Karikari joins the podcast to discuss his work with these new blood tests, how accurate they are, and what research needs to be done before they are made available for clinical use.

3:12 How close do you think we are to using these Alzheimer’s tests in doctor’s offices?

8:28 How accurate are the current available tests, such as spinal taps and these new blood tests, at identifying Alzheimer’s disease?

17:40 How early can these tests identify Alzheimer’s disease proteins before an individual shows symptoms?

21:41 How accurate can the risk calculators used with the blood tests be?

Learn about Dr. Thomas Karikari in his bio on the BrightFocus Foundation’s website.

Register for the annual Alzheimer's Disease & Related Dementias Research Day at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center’s website. The April 5 event is designed to encourage collaboration and promote scientific thought among faculty, students and researchers from a wide range of disciplines across the UW–Madison campus.

The Puglielli lab at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health has found a way to manipulate autophagy — a process where cells clean out damaged materials — to rid the brain of toxic proteins like amyloid and tau. Researchers hope to use the power of this process to develop future treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and other diseases of aging. Luigi Puglielli joins the podcast to discuss his team’s research over the past 15 years, why the scientific process can take years to turn ideas into possible treatments, and how he hopes this research can be used in the future.

Guest: Luigi Puglielli, MD, PhD, professor of medicine, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health

7:47 Tell us about how you manipulated this process of autophagy. Why is this discovery so important?

15:14 What role does acetyl-CoA play in the brain?

19:58 What does the future look like for this research?

Learn more about Luigi Puglielli, MD, PhD, and his work in his bio and on the Puglielli Lab website.

Read Dr. Puglielli’s recent paper “ATase inhibition rescues age-associated proteotoxicity of the secretory pathway,” published online on February 25, 2022 in “Communications Biology.”