Neill R. Graff-Radford, M.D.

Identifying Genes that Delay or Prevent Alzheimer's disease, A Feasibility Study

Our goal is to identify specific genes in non-demented siblings between 80 and 85 years of age that are involved in delaying the onset or preventing the development of Alzheimer's disease. To this end we plan to determine if a) a group of 300 sibling pairs of this age group can be collected and b) if dementia in this age group can be detected by telephone interviews.

Preliminary results: So far mass mailing to persons over 85 in the counties around Jacksonville and those around Ft Lauderdale has let to 255 phone Clinical Dementia Ratings (CDR) and Telephone Interview Cognitive Scale measurements (TICS-m) and evaluations of 126 volunteers in person. Currently 248 persons from the Jacksonville area are enrolled with blood samples. Collections from the Ft Lauderdale area are ongoing and will proof the concept that sibling pairs qualified for our genetic study can be found in an area remote from the Mayo Clinic. . Our preliminary analysis of the telephone interviews of 108 volunteers found that the telephone screens (TICS and CDR) have estimated positive predictive values of 97% as compared to in-person evaluations when identifying no dementia as the condition of interest.

With successful funding, we will continue our recruiting in the second year. We will also start evaluating our test groups for the frequency of genes that increase the risk of developing Alzheimer's and those that have been reported to provide a certain protection.