Pioneering early-onset Alzheimer’s disease study is focus of Alzheimer’s & Dementia special issue

Newswise — INDIANAPOLIS – A pioneering Alzheimer’s disease study led by Indiana University School of Medicine researchers is the focus of a special issue of Alzheimer’s & Dementia, the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Led by IU School of Medicine’s Liana G. Apostolova, MD, the Longitudinal Early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease Study (LEADS) is the largest and most comprehensive study of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, which to this point has been an under-studied condition, in the United States. The study began in 2018 with over $44 million in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging (NIA).

Dustin B. Hammers, PhD, an associate professor of neurology at the IU School of Medicine and the lead neuropsychologist on the LEADS study, said given that so little has been established about early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers strove to choose pieces for the special issue that characterized the condition according to its presentation clinically, cognitively, genetically, and from a biological-marker perspective. The latter includes using MRI and PET imaging and cerebrospinal fluid measurement to look at hallmark changes in the brain related to temporal lobe atrophy and the presence of β-amyloid and tau proteins.

“Smaller studies have long suggested that early-onset Alzheimer’s disease may present differently than traditional-onset Alzheimer’s disease, but until the LEADS study, concerns related to study sample or methods interfered with interpretation,” said Hammers, who is also the principal investigator on the NIA- and Alzheimer’s Association- funded LEADS-sub-study Lifestyle Interventions for the Treatment of Early-Onset AD Study (LITES). “With this special issue on LEADS, the reader is provided a collection of findings on the most well-characterized sample of patients with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, all in one place. Our goal with this special issue was to permit the reader to have a more thorough understanding of early-onset Alzheimer’s after reading it.”

Hammers said none of this research could have occurred without the visionary leadership of Apostolova and other principal investigators Maria C. Carrillo, PhD, of the Alzheimer’s Association; Brad Dickerson, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School; and Gil Rabinovici, MD, of the University of California San Francisco; as well as the generous support of the NIA and the Alzheimer’s Association.