GAP-Net sites Butler Hospitals Memory and Aging Program and Rhode Island Hospitals Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders Center were featured on 10WJAR in Providence, RI about an Alzheimer’s clinical trial that looks to prevent the disease before symptoms occur.
A new clinical trial is aimed at preventing Alzheimer’s years before symptoms arise.
There will be 100 sites worldwide; two of them are in Rhode Island, recruiting men and women 55-80 with normal memory who may be at risk for developing Alzheimer’s Disease.
“My memory, as far as I know, is fine now but I don’t think at age 63 is too early to start seeing what’s going on and if there’s something to help prevent it, I’m all in,” said David Kalberer of Attleboro.ADVERTISING
We met him a year and a half ago at Butler Hospital’s Memory and Aging Program when he was enrolled in a clinical trial that showed he carried an Alzheimer’s gene that put him at a higher risk of developing the memory-robbing disease.
“My mother died of Alzheimer’s,” said Kalberer.
His dad, he said, is in the advanced stages.
Now he is waiting to see if he qualifies for another study to see if he has a buildup of the protein plaques in the brain known as amyloid–believed to play a role in Alzheimer’s.
If he is, he would qualify for a new trial, called ahead, which involves the use of a specialized drug.
“It’s an antibody that binds to the plaques. It stimulates the immune system to clear the plaques,” said Dr. Stephen Salloway, director of Butler Hospital’s Memory and Aging Program. leading the study out of Butler.
“And the idea is can we bend the curve, so to speak, in reducing someone’s risk for declining to clinical dementia,” said Dr. Jonathan Drake, associate director of the Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders Program at Rhode Island hospital.
Both sites enrolling in Rhode Island for this four-year study.
“They do receive serial, repeated pet scans to see whether or not the medication is doing its job,” said Drake.
“We’re going to do all we can to see if David can be the first person in the world to get the drug if he qualifies,” said Salloway.
“I’m hoping I don’t need to be in this study because the plaque amyloid’s not there. But if it is, then I’m happy to be in the research study because that’s what the medication is supposed to do—to see what it can do to remove the plaque. So, either way, I’m glad to be part of this study,” said Kalberer.
For more information on the Butler Hospital’s Memory and Aging Program, click here.
To contact the Rhode Island Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders Center, call 1-844-5MEMORY or email at memory@lifespan.org.
Originally posted by 10WJAR on July 20, 2020.