The Reporter: June 1997, Vol.8, No.3
RESEARCH NOTES
Columbia Dominates JAMA Issue

P&S researchers authored or co-authored three of nine papers related to Alzheimer's disease in a March theme issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Columbia papers were by Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center researchers of the epidemiology of brain disease.

As a result of one of the studies, funded by the National Institute on Aging, physicians may now for the first time be able to set a time frame for Alzheimer's patients. Dr. Yaakov Stern, P&S professor of clinical neuropsychology, and colleagues developed mathematical formulas to estimate the length of time before a patient either requires nursing home care (or its equivalent) or dies.

Dr. Richard Mayeux, the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Public Health (Epidemiology) and director of the Sergievsky Center, is the principal investigator on another study that implies that individuals who develop dementia with stroke and those who develop Alzheimer's disease may share a genetic susceptibility. The study, funded in part by the NIH, found a connection between APOE genotype, a known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, and dementia in patients with stroke.

The authors concluded that although the occurrence of stroke seems unrelated to APOE genotype, the outcome after stroke may be worse for individuals with an APOE 4 allele.

Drs. Mayeux and Benjamin Tycko, P&S associate professor of pathology, were co-authors on a study with investigators at Rush University that concluded that APOE 4 allele continues to account for some degree of genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease in the very old, but other genetic and environmental factors also may be important. The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging.