$14.5 million in renewed funding from the National Institutes of Health will help the University of Kentucky Sanders Brown Center on Aging continue studying Alzheimer’s Disease. While the ultimate goal for decades has been to find a cure for the fatal dementia ailment, Sanders Brown Center Director Linda Van Eldik said preventing progression is probably more likely.
“When the brain is injured so much and so many nerve cells have died, it really hard to bring that back. I think a more realistic idea rather than the word cure, but it will essentially be a cure is either to prevent it from happening in the beginning or really delay the progression,” said Eldik.
Van Eldik noted the brain is influenced by the rest of the body, so lifestyle choices make a difference. She added exercise is very important as a potential preventive measure. The Sanders Brown Center director doesn’t envision the development of a so-called magic pill to treat patients, but more likely a cocktail approach, similar to that used to treat H-I-V.
Van Eldik said volunteers are crucial to work done by medical researchers. “The spend a lot of time with us. They come back every year for an extensive series of workups. And they are the ones that are helping us to understand what’s going on in the brain, the earliest changes that happen, way before any memory or thinking problems,” explained Van Eldik.
While a cure for Alzheimer’s is always possible, Van Eldik believes stopping progression of this form of dementia is more likely. She said delaying progress for five years would cut the incidence of Alzheimer’s in half. In his remarks, UK President Eli Capilouto said there are about 75,000 Kentuckians living with Alzheimer’s today.
