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85 active trials for Alzheimer's Disease

Amyloid and Glucose PET Imaging in Alzheimer and Vascular Cognitive Impairment Patients With Significant White Matter Disease

The prevalence of both Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and stroke doubles each decade over 65 years old. Both are major causes of dementia, currently estimated to affect 46 million people worldwide. The current costs globally are $818 billion. Additionally, in population studies elders over 65 years, "covert" cerebral small vessel disease appears on MRI scans as silent lacunar infarcts in 25% as Microbleeds in 10%, and as focal or diffuse 'incidental' white matter disease (WMD) in 95%. WMD is extensive in 20%, with a clinical threshold effect around 10cc2. Small vessel disease is even more common in dementia, often coexisting with AD and independently contributing to cognitive decline and progression to dementia. Longitudinal imaging using cerebral amyloid labeling opens a new opportunity to understand the additive/interactive effects of small vessel disease and AD. The design of this study includes recruitment of two cohorts, including Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and/or early Alzheimer Disease subjects from memory clinics and subjects with strokes/TIA from stroke prevention clinics. Inclusion criteria include the presence of moderate/extensive white matter disease, eg. Fazekas score of 2 (with confluent peri-ventricular hyperintensities) or Fazekas score of 3, as determined by previous MR or CT, > 60 years of age, Mini-Mental Status Exam (MMSE) scores ≥ 20. Subjects will undergo 3T structural MRI (including T1, PD/T2, FLAIR, GRE, DTI, ASL, and resting state fMRI), glucose PET, amyloid PET (using AV-45 florbetapir) and neuropsychological testing, as well as blood sampling. Repeat MR and PET/CT imaging and neuropsychological testing will be conducted at 24 months. The follow up assessments can also be completed at either year 1 or year 3 or Year 4 depending on the availability of study participants. The imaging portion is designed to closely parallel the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) in order to benefit from the availability of both cognitively normal controls (NC), MCI and Alzheimer's disease subjects with minimal WMD.

Start: August 2014
The Locus Coeruleus and Memory

The cause of Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, remains unknown. Neuropathological studies suggest that a small area in the brainstem, the locus coeruleus, might be the site of the onset of the disease. This area is the sole source of noradrenalin to the brain, a neurotransmitter involved in arousal, but also cognitive functions. Animal and pharmacological studies have hinted towards an important role of this area in memory functioning. However, these studies were hampered by the limited spatial resolution, making it hard to clearly localize the locus coeruleus in the brain. New developments in brain imaging allow now to visualize the brain with stunning precision. Furthermore, a non-invasive new stimulation method, transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation, is believed to excite the locus coeruleus and thereby influencing neuronal networks and memory functioning. There are three aims in this project: To investigate how the functional interaction between the locus coeruleus and other brain areas, in particular the medial temporal lobe areas, during memory processes (encoding, consolidation and retrieval) change with development of Alzheimer's disease. To investigate associations between noradrenaline, memory performance and brain functioning. The investigators aim to investigate how acute noradrenalin levels change during the different memory processes and whether or not this is beneficial for performance. Furthermore, the investigators will investigate whether this interaction between noradrenalin, memory performance and brain functioning is different healthy older individuals (n =35) or patients with prodromal Alzheimer's disease (n =35). To investigate the underlying neural network changes during transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation. The investigators will focus on differences in functional connectivity between the locus coeruleus and the medial temporal lobe areas in healthy older individuals and prodromal Alzheimer's disease patients. An experimental condition will be compared with a sham condition in a pseudo-randomized cross-over design.

Start: February 2017
A Noval Tau Tracer in Young Onset Dementia

Dementia is a clinical syndrome which characterized by progressive cognitive impairment, behavior disturbance and dysfunction of daily activity. In aging population, Alzheimer's dementia (AD) is the most common late onset dementia which occupied about 50-75%, the vascular dementia, frontotemporal lobardegeneration (FTLD) and corticobasal syndrome is followed. On the other hand, the young onset dementia (YOD), which represents the onset of dementia before65 years old, is only about 1/10 to 1/100 proportion of late onset dementia. The YOD is different from late onset dementia in the proportion of degenerative subtype (e.g. the FTLD is more frequent than AD). Besides, frequent atypical presentation of clinical syndrome in the YOD which characterize the different variant of AD made the early accurate diagnosis of AD is more difficult. Currently, there is no available data to describe the proportion of subtype in YOD in Taiwan. In AD dementia, two important biomarkers are amylod plaque made by ß-amyloid protein and neurofibrillary tangle made by phosphorylation tau protein. In the past, they only can be seen under the microscope findings at autopsy study. Recently, the new amyloid tracer and tau tracer had been developed and could evaluate the deposition of amyloid and tau protein in human brain. These progresses had substantially improved the accurate diagnosis of degenerative dementia. A noval tau tracer [ 18F]PM-PBB3, which had substantially improved the off-target binding and more clear background in human brain than previous tau tracer. In current project, investigator will aim to consecutive collect 50 YOD due to the neurodegeneration in 3 years using the NIA-AA research framework system(ATN system) to achieve accurate diagnosis of the dementia subtype by the detail clinical neurology study, neuropsychological examination, amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) and tau PET study. In the first year, investigator will perform feasibility study to explore the topographical tau distribution in different subtype of YOD. In the next 2 years, investigator will perform a large scale study in a group of YOD to understand the amyloid and tau deposition and their association with clinical parameters. From current project, investigator could understand the tau deposition in different YOD subtype. Investigator also could understand the correlation between clinical phenotype and molecular pathology. Investigator will use a mathematic model to construct the model of diffusion kurtosis imaging from brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and relate the white matter integrity with amyloid and tau PET imaging.

Start: February 2020
Modeling the Relationships Between Functional Connectivity and Amyloid Deposition in Alzheimer's Disease

Glucose is the main energy source of brain. Different neural degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's disease have shown distinct brain glucose metabolic patterns. FDG-PET is a established non-invasive method to measures cerebral glucose metabolism and can be used to differentiate different types of neurodegenerative diseases that anatomical imaging such as CT or MRI may not be able to differentiate. Among patients whose Alzheimer's diseases have not been confirmed, the defects in brain glucose metabolism can predict future amyloid plaque deposition. On the other hand, early amyloid plaque deposition may predict the future occurrence of Alzheimer's disease as early as 15 years before the onset. This research project is focusing on the sequential change of the two biomarkers of brain glucose metabolism and amyloid plaque deposition and their correlation with clinical symptoms in patients with Alzheimer's disease. The subjects in this project will be including normal controls without cognitive impairment, patients with prodromal AD or AD. The relationship between functional connectivity of FDG-PET and amyloid deposition in different group of patients will be investigated. Further correlation with tau PET will be also discussed. In the imaging process part of this project, the standard tool, SPM (Spatial Parametric Mapping) will be applied. As machine learning/deep learning methodology is gaining popularity in medical imaging research community, collaboration with artificial intelligence core laboratory at Linkou will be pursued to investigate hidden correlation between functional connectivity, amyloid plaque, progress of clinical symptoms with time that previous statistical methods may not be able to find.

Start: March 2019