Health

Study Peeks Into Healthy Brains to Hunt Alzheimer’s Culprit

Published

10 years ago

May 26, 2015

In this photo taken May 19, 2015, Judith Chase Gilbert, of Arlington, Va., is loaded into a PET scanner by Nuclear Medicine Technologist J.R. Aguilar at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington. Gilbert shows no signs of memory problems but volunteered for a new kind of scan as part of a study peeking into healthy brains to check for clues about Alzheimer’s disease. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sticky plaque gets the most attention, but now healthy seniors at risk of Alzheimer’s are letting scientists peek into their brains to see if another culprit is lurking.

No one knows what actually causes Alzheimer’s, but the suspects are its two hallmarks — the gunky amyloid in those brain plaques or tangles of a protein named tau that clog dying brain cells. New imaging can spot those tangles in living brains, providing a chance to finally better understand what triggers dementia.

Now researchers are adding tau brain scans to an ambitious study that’s testing if an experimental drug might help healthy but at-risk people stave off Alzheimer’s. Whether that medication works or not, it’s the first drug study where scientists can track how both of Alzheimer’s signature markers begin building up in older adults before memory ever slips.

“The combination of amyloid and tau is really the toxic duo,” predicted Dr. Reisa Sperling of Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who is leading the so-called A4 study. “To see it in life is really striking.”

The A4 study — it stands for Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer’s — aims to enroll 1,000 healthy seniors like Judith Chase Gilbert, 77, of Arlington, Virginia. The recently retired government worker is mentally sharp but learned through the study that her brain harbors amyloid buildup that might increase her risk. Last week, researchers slid Gilbert into a doughnut-shaped PET scanner as she became one of the first study participants to also have their brains scanned for tau.

“We know that tau starts entering the picture at some point, and we do not know when. We do not know how that interaction happens. We should know,” said chief science officer Maria Carrillo of the Alzheimer’s Association, which is pushing to add tau scans to other dementia research, too.

More than 35 million people worldwide have Alzheimer’s or similar dementias, including about 5 million in the U.S. Those numbers are expected to rise rapidly as the baby boomers get older. There is no good treatment. Today’s medications only temporarily ease symptoms and attempts at new drugs, mostly targeted at sticky amyloid, have failed in recent years.

Maybe that’s because treatment didn’t start early enough. Scientists now think Alzheimer’s begins quietly ravaging the brain more than a decade before symptoms appear, much like heart disease is triggered by gradual cholesterol buildup. Brain scans show many healthy older adults quietly harbor those sticky amyloid plaques, not a guarantee that they’ll eventually get Alzheimer’s but an increased risk.

Yet more recent research, including a large autopsy study from the Mayo Clinic, suggests that Alzheimer’s other bad actor — that tangle-forming tau protein — also plays a big role. The newest theory: Amyloid sparks a smoldering risk, but later spread of toxic tau speeds the brain destruction.

Normal tau acts sort of like railroad tracks to help nerve cells transport food and other molecules. But in Alzheimer’s, the protein’s strands collapse into tangles and eventually the cell dies. Most healthy people have a small amount of dysfunctional tau in one part of the brain by their 70s, Sperling said. But amyloid plaques somehow encourage this bad tau to spread toward the brain’s memory center, she explained.

The A4 study, which is enrolling participants in the U.S., Australia and Canada, may give some clues.

The goal is to check up to 500 people for tau three times over the three-year study, as researchers tease out when and how it forms in those who are still healthy. They won’t be told the results — scientists don’t know enough yet about what the scans portend.

At the same time, study participants will receive either an experimental anti-amyloid drug — Eli Lilly & Co.’s solanezumab — or a placebo as researchers track their memory. The $140 million study is funded by the National Institutes of Health, Lilly and others; the Alzheimer’s Association helped fund the addition of the tau scans.

The idea: If the drug proves to be helpful, it might be tamping down amyloid formation that in turn reins in toxic tau. In previous studies, solanezumab failed to help full-blown Alzheimer’s but appeared to slow mental decline in patients with mild disease, raising interest in testing the still healthy.

“We’re trying to remove amyloid’s downstream effects on tau formation,” said Dr. R. Scott Turner of Georgetown University Medical Center, where Gilbert enrolled in the study.

Seeing how amyloid and tau interact in living brains “is opening a whole new chapter into possible therapies,” Turner added.

For Gilbert, learning she had amyloid buildup “was distressing,” but it has prompted her to take extra steps, in addition to the study, to protect her brain. On her doctor’s advice, she’s exercising more, and exercising her brain in a new way by buying a keyboard to start piano lessons.

“It’s exciting to be part of something that’s cutting edge,” said Gilbert, who had never heard of tau before.

And she has a spot-on question: “So what’s the medication for the tau?”

Stay tuned: A handful of drugs to target tau also are in development but testing will take several years.

___

Online: www.a4study.org

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Activism

Through Two Programs, Shuja Helps Others Get a Second Chance at a First-Class Life

Damon Johnson, a peer counselor who serves as the executive director of Black Men Speak and Men and Women of Color will be affected by the state’s new rules. Living with a behavioral health condition, he is an advocate and a leader. Damon, best known as Shuja, was incarcerated for 34 years and today is advocating for the rights of persons with similar lived experience and for the survival of peer-led programs like the one he manages.

Published

2 days ago

December 24, 2024

Oakland Post

Damon “Shuja” Johnson at an Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services Holiday Cultural Event for the Office of Peer Support Services. Courtesy photo.

By Melody Parker, Gloria Woodson, Jaleah Winn and Damon Shuja Johnson
Special to The Post

Under recently passed Proposition 1, California’s behavioral health services will be allocated $1 billion for services for the unhoused in 2026-27, Governor Gavin Newsom announced last summer.

Although some of the funds from the Mental Health Services Act were diverted to Proposition 1, individuals living with behavioral health conditions and housing challenges are maintaining hope for wellness and recovery.

Two days after his reentry to the community, Shuja began work as an outreach coordinator for Black Men Speak. Within a year, Shuja was promoted and later appointed to director after the loss of former Black Men Speak Executive Director Joe Anderson.

A native of North Oakland, Shuja was raised in an all-women household after his grandfather was murdered. Though dealing with his own grief, the loss caused Shuja to become the “man of the family.”

His grandmother’s nurturing helped him to overcome the trauma of his grandfather’s death which, “gave him a foundation as a child.” He recalls fond memories of his childhood, like riding a new bike he received for the holidays. “My friends and myself spent meaningful time together as children,” he said. “Together, we would build go-carts, climb trees, have rock fights and find worms, crabs and bees.”

But his trauma impacted his childhood and led to his being impacted by the system. Shuja grew up mostly in detention halls and prison.

Besides directing Black Men Speak! (BMS!)/Men and Women of Color (MWOC), he is also the director of a self-help center in Oakland. There, Shuja and the peer workers provide support to the unhoused. He coordinates a digital literacy program, co-facilitates trainings for peer support specialists, organizes a service animal resource, provides peer support and directs speakers’ bureaus.

BMS! and MWOC are programs increasing wellness and recovery by sharing stories of hope and journeys to meaningful living. Members have authored presentations and spoken to audiences on topics such as post-traumatic stress disorder, family, community violence, self-worth, spirituality, and mental health, alternative therapies, eight dimensions of wellness, reentry, single parenting and health.

The members have been featured nationally and locally, at trainings and conferences and throughout Alameda County Behavioral Health Care services. The organization has been in operation for over a decade.

It all began in 2009 and received nonprofit status in 2012. The group developed from Peers Organizing Community Change, formerly known as Pool of Consumer Champions (POCC), originally established as an all-men’s committee.

The committee co-founders Dewitt Buckingham and Darnell Livingston organized men with experience in the public mental health system for a speaker’s bureau. This was the consensus of the committee after a process facilitated by Katrina Killian, Steven Bucholtz, Sally Zinman and Jaleah Winn.

The committee and facilitators composed the following mission. The BMS!/MWOC mission is “to inform and enlighten the mental health community and the general public about issues concerning men and women of color suffering from mental health and substance abuse challenges, through storytelling thereby promoting ad increasing wellness, recovery, and freedom.”

Shuja has a vision and plans for the organization. “BMS!/MWOC will be sustained with the funding of $1.5 million for capacity building to hire people to pay salaries for staff.”

Currently, BMS!/MWOC has volunteers assisting the programs. Funding will enable the enhancement, increase in self-help services and provide for outings and meals. “We want exposure as when adults and children have taken the free BART rides to go to places outside of Oakland that they never traveled,” Shuja said. “We want to go to Africa. More influential communities can travel, and we need the same opportunity.”

Despite several barriers that are facing Shuja and the organization, he is determined to fulfill the nonprofit’s mission. “There is money. Children wear $200 shoes. We want to teach financial literacy, not to be a slave but how to buy and how to keep. BMS! needs some rich friends and we also need friends who have know-how. We need support from private and public sectors.

“BMS! is one of the only Black organizations in ACBHCS. Today we have the SB 803, Peer Support Specialist bill that will enable us to bill Medicaid/Medi-Cal and only two full-time staff. We do not have the support of the community.”

Shuja is honored to be a participant in advocacy for legislation to improve the lives of peers and is not discouraged by changes to statewide policies. The current changes coming down the pike with Prop 1 are motivating him to work more diligently for the rights of behavioral health clients.

“This is about employment and empowerment and authenticity. The unhoused can be asked about hope and faith. I had to have faith and hope every day that I awakened in prison. I would have died in prison, but I had hope, faith and peer support and it manifested.

“My first reentry job is to go back to my family and save them and if this is repeated among families then we will have wellness and community. Kids raise themselves today. Today, grown folks cannot be in kids’ business. We want to do better. How can we bring back the good of the past?”

Today, the good of the past is coming back with the work of Black Men Speak! Men and Women Of Color. All support is welcome. Black Men Speak and Men and Women of Color welcome contributions and invitations to collaborate. In order to contact the program staff please reach out to 510-969-5086 or shuja@blackmenspeak.org.

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Activism

A Student-Run Group Is Providing Critical Support Services to Underserved Residents

During his three years volunteering at the program, Resource Director Zain Shabbir, says he noticed that many of the people who come in do not know how to navigate social services support systems, particularly online. This knowledge deficit, Shabbir says, is due to age or limited exposure to technology.

Published

2 days ago

December 24, 2024

Oakland Post

UC Berkeley Law Students help a clinic attendee with legal advice at their Tuesday night services. The Clinic offers a variety of resources, including medical, to those in the community who have little access to these services. Photo by Magaly Muñoz

Part 2

By Magaly Muñoz

Resource Director Zain Shabbir is a jack-of-all-trades at the Suitcase Clinic, a student-run resource center that provides health and other services to underserved residents of Berkeley and surrounding areas.

Shabbir was once a clinic director. Now, he manages the General Clinic, floating around when case managers need assistance. And he has big plans for a new initiative.

During his three years volunteering at the program, Shabbir says he noticed that many of the people who come in do not know how to navigate social services support systems, particularly online. This knowledge deficit, Shabbir says, is due to age or limited exposure to technology.

So, he teaches clients the basics of using email, writing in word documents, and backing up files to their phones.

Shabbir shared a story about an interaction he had with a woman who came in seeking help to create a template to message property owners and realtors as she was seeking housing. Until that point, the woman was composing separate messages to each listing she was interested in, and that process was taking up too much of her time. With Shabbir’s help, she created a standard template she could modify and use for each housing inquiry or application.

He’s also hoping to use the technology to help people create resumes to find jobs.

“[The intent] is to help people find work in the city or wherever they live — or help them find housing. As most are probably aware, the two really go together because for housing, you need income verification, and for a job you need housing,” Shabbir said.

Having a warm place to go and a hot meal may seem basic buy it is critical for people who are struggling, clinic leaders say.

Mark, a frequent attendee of the Tuesday clinic, told the Oakland Post that he’s been receiving services from the program for nearly 25 years.

Mark said he was able to receive a referral to dental care through the Clinic, which he’s been using for about 20 years now. He also utilized the chiropractor, a service that is no longer offered, for pain and aches he acquired over the years.

Many program participants say they visit the clinic now for services provided by Berkeley medical students, who rely on osteopathic care rather than traditional methods. Osteopathic medicine is a medical philosophy and practice that focuses on the whole person, rather than just symptoms.

Executive director Nilo Golchini said that many clinic patients tend to appreciate and trust this type of medicine over mainstream practices because of sub-standard care they have received in the past because they are homeless or poor.

Acupuncture is also an extremely popular station at the Clinic as well, with participants saying it “soothes and calms” them.

Attendees of the clinic are generally in happy spirits throughout the hours they’re able to interact with fellow residents. Some even participate in arts and crafts, moving from table to show their friends their new creations.

“It’s a program that’s going strong,” said Golchini. “There’s a space for everyone” who wants to volunteer or receive services, and they’ll keep going as long as the community needs it.

The Suitcase General Clinic is open every Tuesday from 6:30 to 9:30pm. Women’s and Youth Clinics are held every Monday from 6 to 9pm.

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Activism

2024 in Review: Seven Questions for Frontline Doulas

California Black Media (CBM) spoke with Frontline Doulas’ co-founder Khefri Riley. She reflected on Frontline’s accomplishments this year and the organization’s goals moving forward.

Published

3 days ago

December 22, 2024

Oakland Post

Khefri Riley, co-founder of Frontline Doulas. Facebook photo.

By Edward Henderson, California Black Media

Frontline Doulas provides African American families non-medical professional perinatal services at no cost.

This includes physical, emotional, informational, psychosocial and advocacy support during the pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum period. Women of all ages — with all forms of insurance — are accepted and encouraged to apply for services.

California Black Media (CBM) spoke with co-founder Khefri Riley. She reflected on Frontline’s accomplishments this year and the organization’s goals moving forward.

Responses have been edited for clarity and length.

Looking back at 2024, what stands out to you as your most important achievement and why? 

In 2024, we are humbled to have been awarded the contract for the Los Angeles County Medical Doula Hub, which means that we are charged with creating a hub of connectivity and support for generating training and helping to create the new doula workforce for the medical doula benefit that went live in California on Jan. 1, 2023.

How did your leadership and investments contribute to improving the lives of Black Californians? 

We believe that the revolution begins in the womb. What we mean by that is we have the potential and the ability to create intentional generational healing from the moment before a child was conceived, when a child was conceived, during this gestational time, and when a child is born.

And there’s a traditional saying in Indigenous communities that what we do now affects future generations going forward. So, the work that we do with birthing families, in particular Black birthing families, is to create powerful and healthy outcomes for the new generation so that we don’t have to replicate pain, fear, discrimination, or racism.

What frustrated you the most over the last year?

Working in reproductive justice often creates a heavy burden on the organization and the caregivers who deliver the services most needed to the communities. So, oftentimes, we’re advocating for those whose voices are silenced and erased, and you really have to be a warrior to stand strong and firm.

What inspired you the most over the last year?

My great-grandmother. My father was his grandmother’s midwife assistant when he was a young boy. I grew up with their medicine stories — the ways that they healed the community and were present to the community, even amidst Jim Crow.

What is one lesson you learned in 2024 that will inform your decision-making next year?

I find that you have to reach for your highest vision, and you have to stand firm in your value. You have to raise your voice, speak up and demand, and know your intrinsic value.

In a word, what is the biggest challenge Black Californians face?

Amplification. We cannot allow our voices to be silent.

What is the goal you want to achieve most in 2025?

I really would like to see a reduction in infant mortality and maternal mortality within our communities and witness this new birth worker force be supported and integrated into systems. So, that way, we fulfill our goal of healthy, unlimited birth in the Black community and indeed in all birthing communities in Los Angeles and California.